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Buy well, buy once

fellow.ventures

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Re: Buy well, buy once

#161

Post by jemmyw »

irrational wrote: post #143
0xr0kk3r wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"rather than getting the $70 replacement part" Appliance repair usually starts at a $100 house-call fee and goes up from there. It is cheaper to buy a new dishwasher than get it repaired.

Unless you repair it yourself. I’ve done things like replacing the bearings and a cracked spider arm in our clothes washer. Not only was it cheap to do so, I also learned a lot about how a washer is put together by dismantling one down almost all the way. Same with replacing the heating element in the dryer.

Living in a country that is a smaller market really sucks on this front because I either cannot get the parts, or they cost more to ship here than the cost of the part itself. Last time I got something for my coffee machine that the manufacturer refused to sell it cost $80 to ship it here from a parts warehouse.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#162

Post by csunbird »

pwpw wrote: post #141

An observation I have made of my grandparents, who certainly had a bit of money, is everything they own is high quality and has lasted them years. My grandfather still has his Hickey Freeman suits and sports coats tailored and repaired by a local menswear shop. Their Dualit toaster still works while I have personally gone through many Cuisinart toasters. Their technics AV components still work with their high quality…

As my father said: We are too poor to buy cheap stuff.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#163

Post by pacifika »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #10

This article, and people posting in this thread are saying that they own 100 or 200 things. I can't believe this at all. My utility room, which basically just has stuff like cleaning products and rags/cloths etc, has more than 200 items in it. It's all useful, we're talking things like bleach, deodorant, shampoo, handwash, etc. My house probably has 50 or more pieces of art on the walls and then another 50 pieces of…

I think your house must be a bit bigger than most people, based on 50 pieces of art, compared to a minimalist living in a rented 2 bedroom apartment

Re: Buy well, buy once

#164

Post by onion2k »

pwpw wrote: post #141

An observation I have made of my grandparents, who certainly had a bit of money, is everything they own is high quality and has lasted them years. My grandfather still has his Hickey Freeman suits and sports coats tailored and repaired by a local menswear shop. Their Dualit toaster still works while I have personally gone through many Cuisinart toasters. Their technics AV components still work with their high quality…

Our clothes are cheaper...

There's a useful function in limited lifespan - things are much easier to update and upgrade. My tastes have changed a lot over the past 20 years. If my clothes lasted longer I'd have a wardrobe full of things I don't like now and wouldn't wear. If my TV lasted 20 years I'd still have an old, inefficient SD CRT box in the corner, or I'd have passed it on to someone else and maybe they'd have scrapped a functioning item now.

It's less true for basic things like toasters and pots and pans, but I suspect the lower quality is partly due to being cheaper to make and therefore more accessible. If everything is made well and costs more then wealthy people have things that last and poor people don't have things. Cheaper things balances that inequality a little.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#165

Post by TonyTrapp »

onion2k wrote: post #164
pwpw wrote: post #141

An observation I have made of my grandparents, who certainly had a bit of money, is everything they own is high quality and has lasted them years. My grandfather still has his Hickey Freeman suits and sports coats tailored and repaired by a local menswear shop. Their Dualit toaster still works while I have personally gone through many Cuisinart toasters. Their technics AV components still work with their high quality…

Our clothes are cheaper... There's a useful function in limited lifespan - things are much easier to update and upgrade. My tastes have changed a lot over the past 20 years. If my clothes lasted longer I'd have a wardrobe full of things I don't like now and wouldn't wear. If my TV lasted 20 years I'd still have an old, inefficient SD CRT box in the corner, or I'd have passed it on to someone else and maybe they'd hav…

It's not useful that the thing happens to be broken at the point of time where you don't like it anymore anyway. If it wasn't broken and you didn't like it anymore, you could pass it on to someone else.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#166

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

I'm not a fan of buying it once. I prefer buying on feedback.

Here's my daily wardrobe:

- an oversized plain black T shirt, - a pair of jeans, - a belt, - black socks, - and a pair of boxer briefs.

I wear these almost every day. Every single one of these items is cheap enough to buy in bulk whenever I want them. So: If I ever walk into my closet and find myself missing any one of these items due to them all being in the laundry, I immediately

1. Take out my phone and 2. Order another pack of them on Amazon.

The beauty of this feedback loop is that I very quickly converge on the point where my buffer matches my flow, where my natural cadence of laundry-doing never leaves me without one of these five essentials. It works regardless of whether I do laundry once a week or once a month, so long as I make sure to do all of it. Worst case scenario, I have a few shirts/pants/boxers/socks/belts that mostly lie around unused, until of course I eventually have to throw out old shirts/pants/boxers/socks/belts because they were used heavily enough to wear down.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#167

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #10

This article, and people posting in this thread are saying that they own 100 or 200 things. I can't believe this at all. My utility room, which basically just has stuff like cleaning products and rags/cloths etc, has more than 200 items in it. It's all useful, we're talking things like bleach, deodorant, shampoo, handwash, etc. My house probably has 50 or more pieces of art on the walls and then another 50 pieces of…

I used to travel for extended times, and I actually counted the items in my backpack. It was about 70 items (if you count a money wad as one item and each sock pair as one item). That's all I needed.

Of course, much more items are accumulating while staying stationary. Easily approaches 1000, and I'm not a hoarder type. If some item has not been used for 1 year, out to the garbage it goes.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#168

Post by pjerem »

onion2k wrote: post #164
pwpw wrote: post #141

An observation I have made of my grandparents, who certainly had a bit of money, is everything they own is high quality and has lasted them years. My grandfather still has his Hickey Freeman suits and sports coats tailored and repaired by a local menswear shop. Their Dualit toaster still works while I have personally gone through many Cuisinart toasters. Their technics AV components still work with their high quality…

Our clothes are cheaper... There's a useful function in limited lifespan - things are much easier to update and upgrade. My tastes have changed a lot over the past 20 years. If my clothes lasted longer I'd have a wardrobe full of things I don't like now and wouldn't wear. If my TV lasted 20 years I'd still have an old, inefficient SD CRT box in the corner, or I'd have passed it on to someone else and maybe they'd hav…

> My tastes have changed a lot over the past 20 years. If my TV lasted 20 years I'd still have an old, inefficient SD CRT box in the corner

Societal context is important here.

Did your taste really changed on itself or did the constant marketing pressure changed your taste for clothes and your expectations for what is an acceptable TV ?

I mean : of course, I’m a tech enthusiast : I love big modern OLED screens, I love 4K movies and beautiful video games. I’m truly amazed by what we can do.

But, does all of this makes me truly happier than when I played with my Nintendo 64 on a cheap CRT screen ? I don’t think so. The pleasure I feel playing video games alone and with my friends never changed with technology evolution.

And it’s just an example that can apply to mostly everything. We just change things because we are encouraged to by marketers. Sometimes things are more robust or more efficient and that’s really worth changing, but that’s pretty uncommon.

Re: Buy well, buy once

#169

Post by 0zemp3c »

mberning wrote: post #56

In a way I admire committed minimalists. But I often wonder what their long term lifestyle is like. Surely many of them are single (or they only count the items which are solely theirs). They surely rent at a higher rate than own property. They surely own vehicles at a lower rate. And so on. I just get this picture of a person in an urban area, living alone in a studio apartment, dependent upon everyone else for basi…

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Re: Buy well, buy once

#170

Post by 0zemp3c »

rpearl wrote: post #66
sundvor wrote: post #32

Amen. Not exactly a minimalist thing this, but more about sourcing quality to "buy once": Rotel multi channel sound system (amp and pre amp) from 1997 here, still going strong with one repair five-ten years in, along with Infinity Kappa speakers from the same time - their surrounds replaced once, a decade ago. Amazing sound, I love how it feels. Where it loses most is connectivity. Amps use DB25 cables both between e…

I respect using that stuff for a while (my amp is about 12 years old but I'm upgrading this year). Stick with what you have if it sounds good to you, but I do feel the need to point out two things: There have been significant improvements in room correction DSP algorithms particularly in the last decade. You don't need to ditch your amp to add these, there are DSP boxes you can put in the preamp stage. These will imp…

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