Oh married life- how do you deal with greedy in laws?

First off- DH and I never expect anything from anyone. We are very generous people, especially with our families. Here’s the situation: we’ve been renting space from my in laws and saving for a house. With Covid, it’s delayed a lot of things, unfortunately but we are still doing our best with saving what we have and actively looking for homes. We pay rent to his parents. I come from a hospitable culture and raised to be polite/respectful (don’t bite that hand that feeds you). I’ll also help clean around the house or help them with anything they need. Also, if we order takeout, we make sure to feed THEIR mouths (and his younger brother) as well. Sometimes we’ll go out of our way to pick up groceries and errands for them (with our money) and I’ll buy more pods for her coffee machine.


The specific situation tonight has got us re-thinking everything. We ordered takeout and had egg rolls - mainly for us but enough for everyone in the household to share. When his dad demanded we eat with them, we were shocked found that they ate 90% of the food we brought home. Again, I was raised to be considerate and polite- that was RUDE. My husband said, “we didn’t even eat yet! How is there 2 left?” His mother mumbled in disapproval. Looking back, I also remembered a comment she made about how for my brother in law’s graduation, my husband and I should order cupcakes from a local, popular shop. We order and she can pick up. Those cupcakes are expensive -$60/dozen. With quarantine life, we’ve also been generous enough to get mini cakes for special occasion- SIL’s bday, family bbq, random special occasion, in laws anniversary, etc... for my husband’s bday, I got him a simple chocolate cake from Whole Foods. His dad one day passively suggested, “we should have another chocolate cake tonight” aka hinting that we just buy cake. It’s affordable ($25) but c’mon! I feel like they’re taking advantage of us now. The solution is to stop it and we will. Also, by asserting our boundaries it won’t work bc they’ll be the ones to get offended . Don’t we have a right to feel taken advantage of?