Buy it for life: Durable, Quality, Practical(buyforlife.com) |
Buy it for life: Durable, Quality, Practical(buyforlife.com) |
I'm now at the point where I crave quality at just about any cost because it's abundantly clear to me that buying crap is bad value. Many of the few high quality things I bought early on in life are still with me and I love them. But so is a huge amount of the garbage I bought earlier and I hate it.
So where I used to go into shops and look at all the expensive items with scorn and think "what idiots must there be who buy all these things that are twice the price!", now I go in and actively try to find out "but is there an even more expensive one I could get with higher quality?"
I don't need the best tools in the world for my home toolbox. I use each tool maybe a couple of times a year and even the cheap ones don't break at that level of use. I bought a $250 RC car and a $10 one, and while the $250 one is awesome I've gotten more use out of the $10 one. Sometimes you need quality but sometimes you don't.
- easier to store - easier to use - pack more power (thus less time spend) - more precise (i'm annoyed if my angles are one millimeter off) - less brittle (its not that cheap ones are breaking, its that even a small, almost invisble chip of metal off your torx head will make your life harder) - less dusty - safer - easier to clean - Combine themselves (transformers for woordworking smh) - Have complete accessories (angle transmission being the most usefull, also the protractor going directly on the radial saw gives you perfect results)
If you want to replace a door with cheap tools, be my guest, i did it once with a friend, i'm not doing it ever again. I'm now bringing my tools every single time.
Yes, it does mean I have spent more money than absolutely necessary, but on the other hand I have a lot of cheap tools that are perfectly serviceable for the two times a year I actually need to use them.
It works for me, you go do what works for you.
So yes, I also want the best of the best and "buy it for life" but I'm starting to think that sometimes this classification is a bit overrated and you need to find a very good balance between price and quality.
My hobbies and interests are more established. I know which tools I use a lot, how I use them, and where spending more makes a difference. I've owned and outgrown my entry level gear.
That, and I have more disposable income. I can afford long term investments because they don't incur short term deprivation.
On the other hand, when trying something new, I still go with the cheaper option until I can appreciate what a better tool would do. In most cases, I find that the cheap tool is enough.
Some of the recommended items are great. I love high-quality skillets, knives, rice cookers, etc.
For other items, I've seen an overly high focus on "specs" in the BIFL community, where the durability comes at the price of being uncomfortable and bulky. With shoes, it would be using X leather here, using Y sole stitching there, etc. By comparison, I want light-weight shoes with soft / no heel counter, that weigh less than the recommended leather bricks. The bloody blisters I got from "quality construction" forced me to figure out what I personally need in a shoe.
Some clothes are consumable, underwear, t-shirts. jeans. I buy conformable, well fitting and cheap, with no expectation that it will last. I don't think too much about it. (A $5 t-shirt will not last as long as a $50 t-shirt, but there is not _that_much difference)
Other clothes, I now know, if I choose carefully can last 20-30 years. My winter jacket that I only wear 2 months of the year is at least 20 years old. My belt that I wear almost every day is at least 15 years old.
Sometimes I find myself doing an insane amount of research trying to find the perfect product, but its a kind of procrastination because I don't actually really need any more stuff. The backpack I take to work everyday is a little ratty, and I have spend a lot of time looking at backpacks on the web while watching TV.
Especially with kids, when I have disposable objects, I don't have to worry if they trash it, or get it dirty. I don't have to worry about losing it(I can order a replacement on Amazon that will be here in 2 days). With long-lasting products that are for life, I find I worry about cleaning them, organizing them, and protecting them.
Maybe to total cost of ownership is less for the more durable product, but you only have to lose it once or damage it once for the savings to go away.
I'd argue there are almost no "buy it for life" electronics. Same with clothing except maybe outerwear.
[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-does-computer-RAM-have-a-lifetime-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warranty#Lifetime_warranty
Show HN: I calculated the monthly cost of ownership for products - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26525183 - March 2021 (2 comments)
Show HN: Summarizing product reviews into simple bullet-point lists with GPT-3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26224784 - Feb 2021 (41 comments)
Review broken products instead of new ones - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25810708 - Jan 2021 (121 comments)
Show HN: Recurring reviews to track the whole lifecycle of a product - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25558891 - Dec 2020 (61 comments)
What's more important to me is narrowing down the list of brands I buy from so I spend less time thinking about shopping and more time being productive.
https://www.heddels.com/2019/09/levis-no-longer-producing-50...
I feel like "buy it for life" is just a different kind of (hipster?) snobbery.
My rule is buy so that when it dies I’m not sad. That varies for different pieces of equipment.
I often repeat the phrase "buy it nice, or buy it twice if not thrice". I've done the buy it cheap to get 'er done type of thing, and I've also bought the good item because it was going to make a shitty job that much easier.
If you buy equipment for climbing, shooting, scuba diving, etc. you can reasonably expect that it's made to a very exacting standard (almost certainly in the US, Japan, or Europe) and will last many years (with well-defined consumable components and maintenance requirements).
I clicked on Go to Shop, it leads to Amazon with a search for "thinkpad T series" and nothing related to the X200. Useless.
I think this happens often in single-page-apps just because developer don't care or don't think about this use case. It's frustratingly common.
For example, Apple's online store does it too: https://www.apple.com/shop/accessories/all/cases-protection No way to right click the various items and open a bunch of tabs.
Doesn't work on the image because they want that to click through the carousel. I think they are wrong (a regular clic can do that, plus they have navigation arrows).
But at least you can shop in the normal fashion, if you click on the text
Disabling right-click for this purpose is like a lock on the front door to your house. It only keeps the honest person at bay. If I want to see the details of the site, there's no stopping DevTools. Hiding images div backgrounds or under click blocking divs is just a mere inconvenience. If the browser is displaying it, it can be gotten to in DevTools
If you need something, you should care for it, you should maintain it, and you should commit to a certain level of care. Not caring about your possessions and seeing them as disposable validates the business models of shelling out crap quality products and the further destruction of our environment.
The landfill reality and the pollution they cause, especially from e-waste, is devastating: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/burning-truth-...
Further, buying low-quality throw-away type products ends up supporting the greedy, lazy low-quality manufacturers. We all end up with only junk for choice.
And as @desine already commented: all this junk ends up in the landfills, oceans, etc.
> The trick to not being owned by your things is to only own what you really, truly need.
I don't think that is quite right. Let's say you need a button down shirt for work. So you only buy 5, custom tailored shirts out of high quality materials. You have bought a minimal amount, and you really do need those shirts.
When you are eating, are you not worried about getting ketchup on your shirt. If kids come up to you, are you not worried about them getting your shirt dirty. Are you worried that your washer and dryer are being too harsh for your shirts.
If on the other hand, you just get a bunch of ok shirts on Amazon or WalMart. You just throw them in the washer and dryer without thinking about it. You eat and play with your kids, knowing if your shirt gets dirty, stained, or ripped, it is not a big deal, you will just get another one.
I think the true key to not having your possessions own you is easy replacability. If you can easily replace them, then you can use them without worrying about them.
Do you really need a cast iron frying pan? They seem to be over-represented in this category because they don't break. But iron in your diet is not that good for you if you're male because it accumulates.
Another thing to be wary of is "buy this best stuff" lists are easy money, people will curate your lists for you, then you just link to amazon and hoarding behavior does the rest.
You literally are buying it for life. They cook the food way better. And a small amount of oil is all that’s needed for eggs and other non stick applications
- The non-stickiness of cast iron has probably been best in class in its age. Today, we have Teflon. Teflon is so non-stick we have trouble having it stick to the pan when making pans. My understanding is that nothing, especially nothing you’re likely to have in your kitchen, beats Teflon, ever. (Kenji Lopez-Alt, a well known chef and/or food scientist alongside being a cast iron fan, also attests to this: https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/11/the-truth-about-cast-iro...)
- I’ve found that it does go against some of my (potentially hypochondriac) cleaning tendencies. Essentially, you can wash it and I think you can use soft soaps, but you can’t really actually scrub it with a hard sponge if you want to get the food out fully. It seems that the carbonisation of food and polymerisation of oil in a layer cake is in fact the thing gives the cast iron its nonstick properties. To someone used to the convivial shine of stainless steel, that’s a tough pill to swallow.
Cast iron is cool, and I’m sure it has its uses, but as someone who only dabbles in kitchen stuff, I’ve found it very inconvenient and frustrating to use.
Stainless steel triple-ply (copper + aluminum) pans though have been fantastic. Even heating and nothing sticks with a bit of oil.
I haven't figured out how to cook pancakes on them yet though, without relying on the Leidenfrost effect, at which point they just kinda burn and don't cook right.
Food cooked on carbon steel or iron tastes so much better.
I've got both professional tools and el-cheapos so I'm familiar with all your plus points, but I still think that parent has a point.
IME, "buying cheap" does not mean "a tool that breaks on the second use", or "makes your life harder". It means "I don't use this tool frequently enough to care enough to pay more".
I've got a cheapo cordless screwdriver that works well enough to do battery replacement on children's toys and similar. When I want to drive self-tappers into wood I use an expensive driver in the garage.
However there are some exceptions to the rule, for example I would never buy a low quality notebook or a low quality car.
If the price of the high quality product is too high for me, then I don't try to look for a cheaper model immediately, but try to go second hand first.
Never ever buy cheap jack stands for instance. The extra money you spend on the good ones is just life insurance.
I have more expensive gear. The value here is not really in the audio quality - which, apart from the most strenuous audio engineering flat-response-and-detailed-image-needed cases, is fine, really - but in being light and cheap and embracing that quality. It rattles a little when you hold it, but it's made to withstand a few drops, and it won't pressure your skull or force your neck out of posture with hours of use. The cable is soldered in but sturdy.
The $75 ones I've used always tend to end up with issues because they don't have these qualities. The cables are still soldered but of a lower thickness, and the rigidity of the frame makes them disconnect more readily. They pinch your ears and crush your skull. The quality is better but not enough to matter in everyday use - a good DAC and a low-noise environment makes more difference.
Better example in the headphone world were high-end IEM's (Shure/Westone/Etymotics). Most of them were in the many hundreds of dollar range for good multi-driver units. In the past few years though Chinese manufacturers (KZ is one I can think of off the top of my head) sell their own lines on aliexpress/taobab using the same drivers for 10% of the cost.
I can't justify recommending the old names now to people, the value just isn't there (and most of the old big names stopped producing in US/EU since China turned out to have better QC). Why pay $200 for a double-driver Westone when I can recommend a 5-driver KZ unit for $60? I just don't get it.
Fortunately, you can buy batteries for most popular tool brands long after the brand stops supporting them, and in a pinch you can buy adapters to make brand a batteries work on brand b tools
Milwaukee continues to sell batteries for their far outdated NiCAD.
If you really need nonstick (frying eggs, basically), that's what you have to use, but cast iron and carbon steel are incredibly versatile and a better buy if you're space-limited than nonstick
As for eggs. Stainless steel with some butter. Way better tasting than teflon. And either way the oil absorbed is minimal.
Sure if my day job was making French omelettes all day, I’d use a Teflon pan. But really on a day to day it’s not necessary.
[1] doesn’t have to be this model. But something like this - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084VJG9VN/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_...
Keep in mind that carbonized and polymerized layer is getting scorched every time you cook with cast iron so it's not the most hospitable environment for bacteria.
I do realise that polymerisation is conversion of burnt oil into polymer at which point it is largely inert, but it’s very hard to get an oil to fully polymerise 100% outside of lab conditions.
Try getting a wire brush for a drill and smoothing it down.
This is generally only an issue for cheaper cast iron pans.
That or just get high carbon steel.
And with cast iron, you are cooking in random organic polymers and eating them. The patina of cast iron pans is random organic chemicals.
There are actually ceramic non-stick pans, in which case you'd be eating sand if I understand the concept correctly.
What that usually comes down to is to let your non-stick pan cool to room temperature before you run water over it, even if you like seeing all that steam. Also, you weren't expecting to sear meat with your nonstick anyway so don't slap a massive cold slab of meat on your unoiled non-stick either.