The Importance of Being Resourceful

Being from the country and being raised on a cattle ranch can teach you many things.  You learn the value of hard work, and how it directly affects your life, i.e. you put up the hay in the summer, the cows have food in the winter or you don't put the hay up in the summer, the cows have no food and die.  Simple stuff.  You learn that your neighbor isn't just the person that lives closest to you, but everyone in your community and beyond. You also learn to drive at a very young age, 5 or 6, which is more out of necessity than desire.  Yes, I have learned many things in the country but the one I am going to talk about today is resourcefulness.  My dad is the prime example of being resourceful.  There is an advantage (or disadvantage) to having a lot of property, which is that you can store a lot of stuff.  Our ranch is covered with steel pipe, fence post (steel and wood), wire, old equipment parts, tires, and many other unidentified objects.  Luckily, most of this stuff is sorted and put in somewhat organized piles. One of my dad's favorite resources is our scrap pile of steel and other metal materials.  It consists of different sized pipes and rods, bent fence posts, and other remnants of metal parts.  My dad would always pull out just the thing he needed as he worked on one project or another, whether it what a metal pipe that became a lever, or a steel plate that would then be welded onto a trailer hitch.  My mother once insisted that he move a particularly large scrap pile to the dump (the "dump" was about a mile from our house on some of our property where we would haul things from dead cows to broken appliances).  My dad complied, but placed the pile neatly above the dump to later retrieve a useful scrap if needed.  Some would call this hoarding, but my dad felt it was hidden treasure.  But, even though it seems a bit much to have a bunch of extra stuff, there always comes along a project or another need to use the resources, whether it is for their intended purpose, or something we would make them work for.

 I feel that I have definitely learned to be resourceful.  I have my roll of duct tape and my can of WD-40.  Macgyver would be able to save the world with just those two items if it came down to it.  I realized yesterday that I had taken heed to my dad's teachings and learned to used my resources.  When I moved to Nashville, I was able to move in to an apartment with a couple of girls where one is planning to move out in a month and a half.  I was also fortunate to find that they had a storage closet that was completely empty and able to fit all my things until I move into a room at the end of November.  Sleeping on an air mattress for that period of time?  No problem.  Having my stuff in the outside storage closet.  No problem.  Not being able to hang up any of my clothes? Problem.  Actually, it's not too big of a problem.  It's just a little inconvenient to have really wrinkled clothes all the time.  So, I took a little trip to Target and got a shower rod.  I made sure to get the one that could hold 50 lbs.  I installed it in the closet, and voila!  Clothing rack!  Now, this may not seem like that big of a deal, but I was really proud of myself.  It really makes the whole situation just that much better, and I feel that I can soldier through til the end of November.  Now, I may start getting some weird looks from the neighbors as they start noticing that I head out onto the back porch to the storage closet every day, emerging with a pile of clothes, or my bedding (I'm able to put my air mattress and blankets in their as well during the day, keeping the living room looking as if it isn't inhabited), but luckily I can't see if they're looking.  So, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.  Or in other words, be resourceful!

                                                         My awesome outside closet!