https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4755470 ("The Best (dcurt.is)", 298 comments)
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing#In_personality_and...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31402797 ("The Worst (moxie.org)", 65 comments)
Northern Australia has a culture of running old cars and boats into the ground, kicking them over and making them go again, walking home if all fails.
For silverware we don’t even try - random sets from IKEA and restaurant stores combined. For plates we use Macy’s colorful plates - which they seemed to sell forever, and they changed the design slightly few years ago, so now they don’t match anymore!
The first stage is right after you spend an insane amount of money to buy the property. At that point, you want to validate the investment, so you spend more on making it look nice, but you're probably oblivious to many realities of homeownership. So yeah, this is when people splurge on matched kitchenware, beautiful cutting boards, "smart" kitchen appliances, sleek-looking but impractical veneer / plastic / glass furniture, etc.
The second stage is when you get kids or pets, and you start losing the battle. You eventually throw in the towel, accepting that there are going to be dings on the walls and on stainless steel appliances, holes in window screens, and veneer peeling off after the fifth juice spill accident.
The third stage is when the kids move out and you can actually make the space look nice. Except now, you know that there's some wisdom to old-fashioned solid wood furniture, that cutting boards are for cutting, and so on. So your home acquires more of an "old people" vibe.
1. Relatively nice stuff I bought for myself when I moved into my apartment
2. Cheap stuff I bought after a friend used a yellow-green scrub sponge and scratched up all my nice stuff
3. Nice stuff I bought for myself after the divorce (Except that it's poorly designed, which makes me wish I'd bought something a little more standard. They all have round handles, which means the utensils try to spin in your hands.)
But then it runs into (un)surprising problem: most brands don’t maintain their designs, so if you find something you like, it’s not going to be available when it’s time to replace entire set couple years later.
In the end I standardized on Blacksocks, which seem to have same design forever, although they are more expensive than I would like.
Airstream is an amazing example of this in a premium product: their trailers get new features but built around existing designs. Parts from different decades just fit together. I wish cars worked like this.
Furniture is tougher as both styles change and there isn’t a lot of manufacturers that make the same thing over and over.
My personal favorite: socks. I standardized on exactly one style of socks that work for me for everything from fitness to everyday wear. I have two dozen of them, replace the oldest with a new six pack every year. I spend no time matching socks. Yes I have one pair of dress socks for when I wear a tux + two pairs of thick wool socks for when I am doing winter things. Outside of that it’s the same Under Armor Resistors every day.
I got mine second hand
But then you’re paying a minimum £120 for a set of cutlery rather than £12.
However the way I look at it is that good cutlery lasts a lifetime.
I’m also a little confused how lose so much cutlery. I have a family too and I’ve never lost any. But Maybe it’s a bigger problem with teenagers and thus my kids are still a couple of years too young?
I mean, modern ones are just solid chunks of Type 304 stainless steel; unless you are a family of Ridley Scott xenomorphs I can't imagine why they wouldn't.
The knife did survive, but I spent a good amount of time bending the tip back to be mostly straight. I’m sure you could destroy a knife by repeating such a practice.
Cheap cutlery can often be thin or made from cheaper steal that is more prone to rust.
Though granted you can also buy good quality cheaper cutlery too (just last week I picked up a set of 16 pieces for £16. Bargain)
Let's say your family has 5 full time members and is timely at doing dishes. 15 sets of flatware would probably be plenty, but sometimes you have extra guests, so start with 20-25.
If you lose or break items and get down to 15, and the set is no longer available, get rid of what you have and get a new set of 20-25.
Don't care also works fine.
But now I have a choice. I can choose the hob myself! But it's such a pressure! I'll probably not buy a new one for 5+ (hopefully 10) years, so it should be good! And not have annoying little quirks I'll notice much more when it was me making the decision. And what's the best bang for buck? Which features do I need? So many choices, and I'd probably be happy with whatever. But I've spent the last two evenings becoming an expert in induction hobs..
We tried to avoid the garbage tide by thinking "you get what you pay for" and paid a lot expecting a better outcome. Ha! The Miele dishwasher we got didn't last 5 years. Turns out the fancy German engineering does not help with reliability but with creating overcomplicated designs with more moving parts.
The d/w that the Miele replaced was a damaged floor model we got for $100 from the orange store. It was so bare the bottom had no cover (by design) and all the parts were exposed, buttressed by some styrofoam and glued to a unibody plastic tub. It literally looked like something out of an injection molding machine with a bunch of parts randomly stuck to it. And yet it lasted longer than the replacement. We're going back to absolute cheapest and expecting to just replace every few years and still come out ahead.
It was hot shit here for a little while, but why couldn't it really break out like medium and substack did?