50 Things You’ll Only Understand If You Grew Up In A Middle Class Family

1. Having too many damn mugs in the cupboard and too many signs on the walls.

2. Living in a neighborhood where all the streets are some version of the name of the neighborhood.

3. Having a plastic bag for your plastic bags.

4. A celebratory family dinner at Applebee’s.

5. Having a two car garage that’s so full of random shit that you can only get one car in it.

6. Renting a boat or a jetski for the day.

7. A heap of board games in the closet that nobody ever plays.

8. You say things like “crap that’s twenty dollars” and “eh it’s just twenty dollars.”

9. Going out on family trips in a big family car.

10. Shopping at Target, because you are tired of Walmart’s bullshit.

11. The good cable package, you know, the one with BBC America? But no movie networks.

12. Magnets on the fridge from everywhere you’ve gone.

13. Going on a family vacation to visit other family.

14. A grown out set of nice salon nails that are just a smidge past when they should have been filled in or redone.

15. Thinking the Cheesecake Factory is the nicest restaurant.

16. Buying a broken but nice looking boat just keep in your driveway so your neighbors talk about how well you must be doing.

17. Getting hyped about going to Disney World.

18. Having a basement that’s just an old former living room couch, a couple generations old games console (likely with some Guitar Hero controllers next to it), a big ass CRT tv, the laundry, and maybe a dart board or something.

19. Having an older “outside fridge” in your garage. Usually a base model early ‘00s fridge that still runs but didn’t make the cut when mom remodeled.

20. Having a living room that barely gets used and a family room. Or having a living room and a “den.”

21. Not personally having a vacation house, but having a kind of run-down cabin or beach house that is shared among your entire extended family.

22. Buying most of your designer goods at TJ Maxx and Marshalls.

23. Family data plan.

24. You have a yard sale on your actual yard, and you may go inside when there are no buyers out there.

25. When you have an extra bedroom and call it your ‘office.’

26. The struggle to gain financial aid when you are in college because you aren’t poor enough to get any help but you aren’t rich enough to pay for it yourself.

27. Owning ‘throw’ pillows in sufficient quantity to suffocate an entire rugby team at the same time.

28. Absence of toiletries from your hotel room after you checkout.

29. Having a stack of napkins from various fast food restaurants that your parents keep in the kitchen.

30. Mowing your own lawn.

31. Wearing flip flops and sandals out in public.

32. Car payments. Rich enough to afford the payments but too poor to buy it outright on sight.

33. Naming your children : Haydon, Braydon, Cayden , Jaydon… you get the idea.

34. Loads of Tupperware.

35. Neighborhood Watches. Sidewalks. Spaghetti night.

36. Suburbans with stickers on the back for a family of 6 and 2 pets.

37. Lemons in a display bowl.

38. Costco membership.

39. Thinking Coach is a high end brand.

40. Living in the suburbs with a fenced backyard full of dog shit. The dog(s) have never been leash trained.

41. Mac and cheese hot dogs for dinner, but it’s Kraft mac n cheese and all beef hot dogs.

42. Having a trampoline next to an aboveground pool.

43. Showing off expensive possessions and simultaneously bragging about the discount you got for it.

44. A fridge with a bottle of Prosecco and different flavored humus in it.

45. Having enough money to pay landscapers to do serious redesign on your lawn, but not enough money to hire good ones, so it doesn’t look as good as thought it would considering how much money you spent on it.

46. Showing off the nicest things you own to pretend you’re better off financially than you are.

47. Getting several small Christmas presents, one medium present for you, or getting one large family present.

48. Judging a restaurant’s quality by how many times the waiter gives you a refill of soda.

49. Starbucks coffee.

50. Thinking you grew up in a poor family until you meet someone who actually did grow up in a poor family.