BUY IT FOR LIFE
On Reddit, users recommend products that are supposedly BIFL: Buy It For Life. Among the items celebrated: A 24-year-old rice cooker, a 32-year-old pair of Doc Martens and an even older alarm clock radio – all going strong.
One user posted a picture of a beloved KitchenAid mixer: “My mother, married in 1968, still uses the one that she received for a wedding gift,” came a reply. I was less sure about a set of wooden spoons, apparently used for 60 years and now looking like something from Middle Earth.
There are sceptics. One Reddit poster wonders if buying for life is just an excuse for buying things that are expensive.
But there is a market. The website BuyMeOnce sells only products that it has vetted for durability and repairability. It sells a pair of socks for £28, with a lifetime guarantee, compared to Shein, where I found two pairs of “Stars Wars-themed” socks available for £1. One consequence: I looked for a birthday present on BuyMeOnce, and found everything too expensive (sorry, Mum).
BuyMeOnce’s founder, Tara Button, has launched an internet browser add-on that, when you are about to buy a product, searches for an eco-alternative. Indeed, if you look, you can often find brands that bet on the long term.
Patagonia repairs worn clothes, often for free; Briggs & Riley offers a lifetime guarantee on its luxury luggage; Le Creuset guarantees its cast-iron cookware for as long as the original owner lives. (It was a Le Creuset casserole that inspired Button to start BuyMeOnce.) Think they don’t make it like they used to? Actually, quite often they do.
Electronics and fashion brands are mostly hopeless. I have given up looking for somewhere that will fix the paper shredder that would probably be perfectly fine with some expertise and soldering.
