What’s a skill you consider basic, that most people don’t actually know how to do?

Washing dishes, and washing clothes. Unless you grew up in a household where everyone had to do chores, and didn’t grow up with a machine for a dishwasher, you’ll never know how to wash dishes and clothes when you’re on your own.

When it comes to cooking, that’s also a big one how you grew up. But unlike washing dishes and clothes, cooking is very cultural based on top of upbringing. Depending on the family dynamics, culture, and generation will heavily influence if YOU can cook.

For example, in my case I come from a lower middle class Dominican immigrant family. So I’m used to being in the kitchen, taking with my grandma, aunts, and mom when they cook growing up. As a child I wasn’t allowed to cook. As a teenager, my older siblings slowly started helping mom in the kitchen. Granted my siblings were 9, 11, and 13 years older than me. So have the basics already done. So by my teenage years I already knew how to boil water, make eggs, and which pots are for what.

Unlike my siblings I spoke and spent time with my female elders as they cooked. So I have more of a cooking understanding but not the skill. In my 20s is when I started helping cooking more. But thanks to siblings and family dynamics, it wasn’t an encouraging experience to where I struggled to cook.

Now when I moved on my own to Oregon in my early 30s, I had my fundamentals down. Leaving me needing to work on my skills. Especially when it comes to knife safety, which was my top weakness. Besides that, I knew all my families seasoning and cooking techniques. I just needed to practice on execution.

This is where the big difference between what we grow up around really shapes our basic skills understanding. It’s easy to blame someone for not knowing common adult things, without looking at what caused the reason they didn’t know.