So the idea of “buy it for life” is to buy items that are durable and last for a long time, things you could buy once and have your whole life, which can save money and be good for the environment
What are some of the top items you recommend for this?
I used to sell appliances and the number of idiots coming in whining that their $300 Amana “only” lasted six or seven years was saddening. Every single time they would bitch about how “Well my grandma’s Derpomatic washer lasted for like thirty years!” and I would ask them how much grandma paid for the thing. Oh, you don’t know? Well good thing the internet knows. Is that the one she had? Yeah? It was $300 too! In 1962. Meaning it was about $3,000 in current-day dollars. Buy a fucking Speed Queen if you want that kind of longevity.
Oh, you don’t have that kind of money? Well then go bitch to your boomer-ass parents about how they ruined the world and leave me out of it.
Reminds me of the old saying: “It’s expensive to be poor.”
Durable goods should be just that, durable. Everything should be rated for their number of cycles before expected failure. Which Speed Queens are, it’s 20,000 cycles or some such. At ten years of use, I’m just a touch under 6000 cycles as a rough estimate.
I paid $750 for a GE front loader in late 2006. In 2013 it was replaced by my current washer that I paid… $800.
Of course the Speed Queen is an old school washer with a mechanical timer. It doesn’t have WiFi, it isn’t pretty, and it doesn’t play ‘Also Sprach Zarathrustra’ when a cycle ends. Why people want that I have no idea, as most of these fucking idiots have no idea what the hell ‘Also Sprach Zarathrustra’ is in any case. Unless you tell them it’s the theme to 2001 A Space Odyssey.