For the latino family unity is one of the things we treasure the most, we grow up with not only our parents and at times also our grandparents in the same house. Because of this the majority of one’s life you spent under the umbrella of your more life experienced parents, they usually do most things for you in order for studying to be your only concern and focus in life, and yes there are shores here and there to teach what responsibility is, but me personally I mainly studied and on my time off it was mainly online games with my friends. A consequence of this is that when it comes to life skills, the things you need to know to survive on your own, I had none by the time I moved out on my own.

Important…

I’m sure you are all aware that the things you need to survive are not that many, mainly food and a warm blanked at night to sleep. But, I personally like to live in a clean and well kept environment, a left over habit from my very clean mom. My house growing up was always extremely clean and organized, it always smelled good. That sort of thing sticks with you and without knowing your parents rubbed some of their habits on you ( good habits ).

The first thing I did was buy some furniture and being a tech guy ( also the field I work in ) I also bought a nice TV and some smart devices to sort of future proof my place 🙂. And yes, I said first to the material stuff, because I’m pretty sure the food came after, I was excited at the time, my priorities were all over the place.

Food…

Food was not that hard to shop for. First I always need to have pasta, typically spaghetti. Believe it or not I eat it every day, at least once a day. Is hard to believe but I have done so for as along as I can remember.

For the rest of things since I had no idea what I was going to cook and my skills limited to pretty much boiling water and cooking the pasta for the duration specified on the box, I had to reach out to my family for advice since I want to learn and pass on the family traditional recipes, which for anyone that has tried latino food, is phenomenal. So I did, my first home cooked meal was yellow rice with sardines and as you might expect, it sucked. Some of the rice was not properly cooked, the color was a bit off, and I didn’t add enough condiments, but I was hungry and after a all the recent spending I had done, I was also kinda broke to go out to eat, so I had to pull through and make the best of a bad meal. After all, food is food ( or at least is what I told my self for it to go down easier )

The next day I went for another one, I couldn’t just give up on the first try. I called my grandmother and asked her one more time the ratios of the ingredients. And side-note, latino parents are not very good at giving cooking directions, they will just tell you “Add a little bit of this” or “Just eye ball it to taste”, things that just make you question how in the world was their food that good. But anyways on the second try I actually made a solid yellow rice with sardines. I added a little bit of avocado on the side and thus my first successful home cooked meal happened. Achievement unlocked! In the meals to follow I had similar experiences, occasionally I would nail it on the first try though, which made me very confident on my new acquired survival skills. I may add some of those recipes here on the site somewhere for anyone interested on easy to make meals especially if you are starting to venture out in the world like I did.

Laundry

This one was particularly easy to learn, especially since the machines pretty much do all the work, all you have to do is separate the whites and the colors, other than that is just a bit time consuming. To be fair I had no complaints about this part, but it did made me appreciate all my parents did for me all the time, like many others before me I certainly took all of that for granted. I have to say, those tasks as mundane someone may think they are do give you a new appreciation for the life you had growing up. Because of my parents and many people who have parents like mine, we were able to just be kids and that was an amazing gift from them, a gift I now understand not all kids in this world are able to get. Even though growing up we weren’t even considered middle class financially or sure I was fortunate to have had the childhood I did.

Conclusion

Living on my own has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, and it continues to be, although I am not entirely alone at the moment but I will get to this later on. I truly recommend everyone that is afraid to do it to just take a chance, you will be amazed about what you’ll learn about yourself and all those fears and anxiety that may come with taking such a big step will be a thing of the past, and you will be glad to have done so. All it takes is a little bit of effort at first. All I know is that if I did it, so can anyone else.

Thank you for reading.