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The Family Knot
The value of sharing at home
Growing up in a lower middle class American home in a rural area has it advantages. With limited resources available you have to become creative. There is no way around this. If you need something and you don’t have it — you have to come up with a solution with what you have on hand.
This upbringing has been the key to my handyman business. Most people can only think in terms of what they need to go get at the store. I on the other hand have the gift of field expedience. I watched Macgyver and I always loved that he always had what he needed. Albeit the show was staged and fake, it was still a viable message.
Learning the how to use your available resources was not the only thing that growing up poor had to offer. We had a family of six(three boys, one spoiled rotten to the core girl and two still married parents plus a dog). We lived in a three bedroom one bath fifteen hundred square foot rented home.
The boys had to share a bedroom while the “can do no wrong” princess got her very own room that was bigger than the bedroom shared by 3 boys. My mother would say “We don’t play favorites in this house”. I’m sure she believed that.
As we boys had to share a small room, a small closet and other living space — we learned to adapt and also to become understanding that…
