For most of my relationship with my wife, we’ve lived pretty close to her mother, within about 15 minutes or less. My parents are 2000 miles away.
It’s ok. I have trouble understanding her motivations, but I think she’s mostly just curious and plays off snooping as “just wandering” pretty poorly. So we try to set clear boundaries and usually that works. She’s nice enough, and has some really admirable traits, but is very earnest and wants to know what’s going on in everyone’s lives. So she has her own little tricks.
She used to just show up at strange times, but that was a long time ago. She also used to just walk in the house “in case someone was sleeping”, and didn’t stop when my wife asked her to knock, so I just started hanging out in my boxers before she’d come over and that fixed it. Usually we don’t have to get passive aggressive though.
Parts of having her close are also good. She loves her family more than anything and I don’t think you can have too many people that really care. She’s been awesome with jumping in to take care of our kids when things come up and is genuinely interested in all the little milestones they go through.
I think most of the problems for people come in when there’s a feeling of being owed something, or a battle for who is more important. She’s always surprised when we do even little things for her, and I think those little things keep everything a couple steps above civil.