When I was 19 and very naive, I moved out from my parents home, I took very few pieces of furniture and rented a second floor walk up studio apartment. It had a living/ bedroom and a kitchen with a small table and chairs and a small bathroom. A very small bathroom. If you wanted to close the door, you had to stand in the shower. The toilet was across from the wash basin. You could actually save time and wash your hands while using the toilet. LOL. Remarkably, the toilet didn't flush . But, that was alright, because the kitchen sink leaked and I could rush home from work every night and use the bucket under the sink to flush the toilet. The only window that wasn't nailed shut was the kitchen window. Unfortunately, the garbage Shute was just outside the window, so if you opened the window, the kitchen was swarming with flies.
You got your workout coming home from work. Knocking your elbow on the wall with the light switch to turn the light on and rushing to put your purse down to get the bucket from under the sink before you got to wash the kitchen floor too. I swear, I had the cleanest the kitchen floor in the city.
I got up every Saturday morning to take my clothes to the laundromat. I was woke up from the printing company downstairs that would turn the presses on and besides the noise, the sofa bed would rock!
The stove had one knob on a burner that was the "fast" burner- it only cooked in high heat. The oven didn't work either.
I had rented the apartment on the first of the month, I went and bought a cake mix on sale and a couple of other things, naturally, on sale too that left me broke. I had not calculated that payday wasn't going to happen until Monday, I had no money left. I tried to cook a cake mix with water on the stove. How many ways can I spell DISASTER. I ate crackers the rest of the weekend.
My visiting aunt tried to offer me a loan. My mother told her,not to give me any money. If I was SMART enough to move out, I could be SMART enough to solve my own problems. I did. I started saving money every month and stocking food. I was never going to be that destitute again.
Now, the apartment was cheap! Like 40.00 a month. It had a wonderful sound view. There were two really cute boys living next door. The lack of some utilities after a few months got to me. And, numerous calls to the landlord went unanswered. I moved out.
I found a nice 1 bedroom apartment closer to work that had been built as a motel for the 1964 Workd's Fair. It was about three years old. The window worked. The neighbors were wonderful. I'm spite of the fact that I had no phone, no tv amd no pillow, I was comfortable. There was a community vacuume cleaner and the free washers and dryers were across the courtyard and down the stairs.
In spite of the fact that money was tight, I ate well and stocked food. Rent took one paycheck and a car payment and utilities took part of the other. I still managed to save enough for college tuition. Eventually, I even got a pillow .
Life's lessons. Sometimes hard, shape the person we develop into.
I stock. I stocked long before the hoarder show. Stocking is just smart. I still love the quote from the Today show. If you don't understand , you ain't ever been broke enough.
I, personally, don't understand the attitude that if you have two tubes of toothpaste in your cupboard, you are a hoarder.
I'm not going to buy 1 tube of toothpaste when I can get two tubes of toothpaste for the same price.
When we lived eight miles from the nearest grocery store, it didn't make sense to have to run to the
store for a tube of toothpaste because you were out.
Our experiences shape our personality and our attitudes. We can embrace our experiences and learn from them, or we can feel sorry for ourselves. I choose to embrace what I learned, and try to help others that are in the same position that I was once in. That's making a positive out of a negative. There were several times in my life where it was sink or swim. I chose to swim even if it was upstream. LOL.
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