211–220 of 392 posts
I find that wallets are easy to buy once. The last wallet I bought was from 2016, made from leather, able to holding quite a few bit of cash and cards while maintaining slimness. I can't foresee needing another wallet until it broke, but it still hasn't broken from daily use since 2016.
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or if throwing it away makes you feel bad, give it away. either it finds its way to somebody who will value it, or somebody will throw it out for you. either way is a win.
Giving it away has now haunted me. Father passed away two years ago and a bunch of computing equipment he bought for me had been donated years before he had passed when it was worth very little. Now in this post covid era all of those things are 'vintage' and super expensive. I have tracked down some of the original equipment through the people I originally gave it to but it has not really been possible to get those…
Your income/purchasing power definitely plays a role here too. Hoarding is more worth it if you don't have an efficient way to covert time into money.
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…
Do you think people are getting new suits because they are "worn out", or perhaps because they're no longer in style?
>Their technics AV components still work with their high quality speakers.
I'll bet modern engineered speakers will beat those high quality speakers, at a fraction of the price. That's modernity.
a pair of Crocs is 50 bucks and that's one of the highest quality pairs of shoes you'll buy for the price. you could buy 10 pairs of Crocs for a $500 pair of Alden's so even if the crocs only lasted a year, it would take a decade to recoup the investment on the Alden's.
but the crocs don't have the same status that Alan Edmonds or Alden or Fiorentini does.
Same thing with the G-Shock watch versus a Rolex.
If you really want quality look at what middle class people are doing. Crocs, Kirkland, G-Shock, Corolla etc.
All this stuff is top quality but rich people wouldn't be caught dead in them.
Another thing rich people like to do is repurposing something completely trivial. This dude probably paid as much or close to shipping the shoes than a new wallet would have cost.
This guy gets a feeling of satisfaction that they're making the world a better place by repurposing their shoes. Then they go to their job where they earn a lot of money defending companies who gave a small town cancer or a massive oil spill or wholesale invasion of privacy.
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When I moved into my apartment, the racks in the dishwasher were badly rusted. I told the management. They replaced the entire dishwasher. They said they couldn't get a replacement rack.
> They replaced the entire dishwasher. They said they couldn't get a replacement rack. What are the margins on replacement racks? Someone would have to pay for warehousing, stock tracking, employees for packing/shipping, then add shipping costs. Why would anyone offer them?
As someone that owns a number of small-engine powered devices, I'm always amazed at how easy/cheap it is to find parts. Most small engines are either one of a couple Briggs and Stratton models, or a knockoff of same. Even across models, B&S usually did a pretty good job of reusing common parts. When you need a part, you can cross reference various part numbers to find either the OEM part or dozens of cheap Chinese copies.
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
My house is a fairly normal sized house, there are millions of it in the UK.
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.
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I personally don't favour cheap over longevity, and I don't really believe most consumer do either. The problem is that it has become increasingly difficult to discern if something will last. An expensive product, from what was a trusted brand, can be just as short lived as a cheap one these days. Cost does not always reflect quality. And brands that build long-lived products struggle as they don't have the repeat cu…
> And brands that build long-lived products struggle as they don't have the repeat customers of products that are good I know of a company that was a national leader in a certain kind of industrial equipment. Now that the industry isn't expanding in this country, the market is saturated and they can't sell anything because what they sold decades ago was designed for excellence and just won't die. Nearly all business…
Not sure how well the durability arguments with new products will hold up over decades like a 60s Braun product may have
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I’m fond of the conspiracy theory that the rise of minimalism is actually propaganda to placate Millennials who can’t afford the same level of material comfort as their parents and other earlier generations enjoyed.
Millennial here and half-baked minimalist here. At least it’s not true for me. For all my life I’ve been drowned in objects. My parents are still telling that I had so many toys. Minimalism is a way for becoming aware of the objects around me. Not so much about the pure number of objects. Since, I started thinking about what should be part of my life and also letting go of things I don’t really need, my savings rate…
The trick they pulled is telling us all that inconvenience is bad and needs to be eliminated, but what I've come to see is that life happens in inconveniences, and consumerism tells us we should trade our life for their junk.