15 Things That You Always Find in a Poor Person’s Home
A home is the summation of all that's happened within it. Whether it's a reminder of where you started from or a wakeup call about where you want to get. Out of this one will either trigger or motivate you. Those of you who grew up poor and made it out, keep a list. How many of these can you relate to?
Here are 15 things that you always find in a poor person's home. Welcome to Alux! Let's start off with something light: glassware. You received it with other purchases or got it for free. You either lived it or you don't know the Coca-Cola glassware. Throughout the house, you'll find containers that are repurposed as Tupperware. If you open up this bad boy, you've got less than a 5% chance of seeing actual cookies but over an 80% chance of finding nails, sewing materials, or batteries in the kitchen drawer. Absolutely no sauce packet is ever thrown out. You never know when you might need it! We've even heard of a restaurant napkin pile for emergencies.
Triggered yet? All right, let's keep going. A warm spot: room heaters are a common thing when you're poor. The heating doesn't work throughout the entire house, so you have a mobile heater plugged into the room you're going to be spending most of your time in. Thermostats are for the rich and middle class. Most of the time, you'll find wet socks or towels on a heat element. You're laughing because you know this is true, and you know precisely where the warm spot in your house is because that's the exact position on the floor where a hot water pipe goes underneath. In the winter, a regular bottle filled with hot water serves as an added heat source. In the summer, it's replaced by a plastic fan that constantly makes a weird noise, but you've learned to live with it.
Knockoffs or generic products: luxury brands are aspirational. Everyone in the know knows you're walking fakes—no discussion about it. And although you say it's just as good as the original, look, it ain't from a quality perspective and attention to detail. We've got no problem with it if they serve as a token that one day you'll be able to get the real thing. But there's lots of cheap pairs of rundown shoes with names that sound familiar but are not quite right. This cereal is also pretty interesting. You ever had any crispy colors or fruit rounds before? Poor people prioritize the volume over quality, which is why everything is crammed.
There is a simple rule to keep in mind here: if your front door opens into the living room, you're probably poor. If it opens up into a small hallway, you're middle class. As for the rich, you've got stairs, elevators, and multiple rooms before you reach one of the living rooms. But let's get back to the topic: there's not enough space. Everything is stacked on top of the other. There are things on the floor and things on the things on the floor. The cabinets can barely be opened, and there's a pantry overrun with stuff that you've been meaning to deep clean for the past couple of years but just haven't.
A poster of a former big goal: it's almost universal. The poster is either of A) an exotic car, B) a hot male singer or band, or C) an almost naked chick. Occasionally, you might find one of an animal, usually a tiger or a wolf. More recently, anime ones are gaining popularity again. Yes, we're talking about you, waifu lords! Now we had posters growing up too—nothing wrong with it. We had one of the car we wanted, one of the house we said we would live in, one of the superheroes we looked up to, and sure, okay, one of a hot celebrity we said we were going to marry when we grew up.
In fancier settings, they're now called vision boards, and they serve as a constant reminder of what you're working toward. We got everything but the celeb. Once you elevate toward or actually achieve those goals, you no longer need to put the posters up. Here's a shameless plug, we'll make it short: your life is cheap because you think investing in yourself is expensive. We've made high-end coaching, something the rich use to make themselves richer, available to everyone. Go to alux.com/app and start your free trial. Even if you don't pay for a subscription, you'll still get a ton of value out of it.
Diluted dishwasher soap: adding water just makes more of it, right? The diluted dishwasher soap is placed strategically near the oil you saved up in a pot because you intend to reuse it multiple times for easier cleaning. There's tin foil covering the stove top, keeping it 100. Sometimes you eat on napkins or straight out of the delivery box just to keep everything smooth.
Something that you borrowed and have yet to give back: we're not talking about pens here. You borrowed a board game, a hoodie, or a cute skirt, a yard tool, books, and some old DVDs that have been with you for so long you don't even have a DVD player to watch them anymore. Sometimes it's by mistake; sometimes it's by design. You borrowed so many things from some people that they've been explicit about never lending you anything else ever again.
No towels match: every towel is a different color—blue, green, brown, orange, even teal. Extra points if you've got one beach towel you regularly use with either a dolphin, a cartoon, your football team, or a depiction of a woman. Sometimes it even happens that folded towels get used as kitchen or bathroom mats.
A drawer filled with bills to be paid: whenever a bill comes in, it goes into a specific drawer. And no, it's not the one with all the pills, no, the other one. The intention is always to pay the bills, so you add them to the drawer and then you forget about them. A few weeks later, payment notices start to arrive, and then you add those to the same drawer. By now you've got multiple bills for the same payment and have lost track of what is what and when some of them are due. You'll try again next month or wait for the final one where they're threatening to cut off your services, and that's the one you pay.
And on this note, the extra points go toward the bag of bags. You know exactly what we're talking about—it's a bag where you keep all the other bags, but you forget to take them with you when you go to the supermarket, so the number of bags perpetually goes up. You know you're poor when you've saved up what you consider the good bags. They're different from the ones you're comfortable using as trash bags.
Underneath the bill drawer, there's another section filled with cables and old electronics. Most of them don't work, but you know you keep them just in case. But that's not what actually fills your home. Roommates or extended family members: you've got relatives living with you. Initially, it was supposed to be temporary, but they're figuring some things out, so they'll stay with you until they get back on their feet. Roommates help with the rent, after all. They're kind of weird, but hey, so is everyone, am I right? Occasionally, there are people you don't know in your house. Someone brought them over; they may or may not be eating your food or staying the night. You're kind of used to it by now.
Branded clothing or swag from former workplaces: of course, you're still rocking it around the house despite no longer working there. Some of you still have the most basic t-shirts you got over a decade ago. In time, you've received a bunch of free stuff that you simply don't dare throw away. Special mention to the free calendars you get or items you received as gifts during local election seasons that maybe sway your vote one way or the other.
Unfinished renovations and mold: some construction was required, and it never went back to the way it used to be. Now you've got a bunch of exposed brick you're trying to pass off as industrial style. The faulty wiring held up by duct tape isn't doing you any favors. One window doesn't even open; the other one has cheap plastic shutter blinds that are always missing two to four panels. Your faucets are crusty, and there's visible mold or water damage in easy-to-access areas. You usually have to wait for the water to go from brown to clear before you use it. There's a trick to it—kind of functionality. You know what we're talking about: you have to jiggle the handle a little bit to get it to work—kind of thing.
The type of situation: if something's not working properly, you fix it by slapping it. At least this generation transitioned that practice from humans to electronics. You also have at least one weird tool, probably homemade, that you use to reach, unlock, or get something to work.
More pets than you're supposed to have: you either have an oversized dog for the amount of space you live in, or you've got multiple cats that are breeding with one another—sometimes it's both. You got accustomed to the smell of urine and fecal matter. Your dog once bit someone. You told yourself it's temporary, and you're trying to find them all a good home. People are starting to notice.
Never-to-be-grown-out furniture and folding chairs: let's call it what it is. Somebody was moving, or you had the opportunity to pick up some furniture for free as long as you took care of the transport, so you did. Now your entire house is a mixture of furniture that doesn't fit because you've got no room. Your primary table is pretty small. There are not enough chairs to sit everyone if they come over to visit. In your home, there are more folding chairs than actual chairs, and whenever you do have guests, you go through the entire house to bring all the chairs together.
Your outside furniture features these beauties, probably in white or some faded-out color. And if you need a step stool, you've got a couple of beer crates or a beer keg lying around.
You know, Alux, you don't get to choose where you start from, but you do have a say in where you end up. The only question is, what should we add to this list? Let us know in the comments. And as for those of you still watching, here's your bonus: expired food, since that date is just a recommendation anyway. This is why you have trust issues about anyone bringing you products or medicine without the packaging. Some of those sauces you still have in your fridge expired in like 2020.
Do yourself a favor and go through your old junk; throw away what should be thrown away and donate the surplus of clothes you no longer wear. It'll minimize the volume of clutter in your home and will positively contribute to your mental well-being. If you're ready to let go of that sauce, write the word "sauce" in the comments. Until next time, my friend, take care.