An apocalypse-proof boiling frog
We have talked a lot about buying the object, but not enough about tossing it. I tossed a bunch of objects over the past month, and text needs to occur about them.
The fitted sheet
I owned two sheet sets for eight years, rotating them in every other week. Then I bought a third on deep discount, and then the elastic on one of the two original fitted sheets started to fail. Also, I once washed it with a red t-shirt, so it was a terrible, vague color of sallow pink, dyed that way in discrete parts. After sleeping for a night, it would sproing off one corner of the bed, and I would have to remake the bed.
I then googled how long fitted sheets last, and it is: two years. So I had already flogged this thing past its prime by double, and now I was still frantically trying to use it.
My replacement fitted sheet is now in the mail.
The snow boots
Snow boots are supposed to last a very long time. I repaired mine multiple times by putting some form of glorified epoxy over the cracks.
Eventually I gave up. The treads were flat, they didn’t work on ice anymore. Snow leaked in everywhere. I looked up the last time I bought snow boots, and it was fourteen years ago.
The oven
This all leads up to the oven, which is the single largest & most important purchase of my adult life.
Yes, you can get ovens for relatively cheap. But if you cook a lot, you can get a nice oven. And nice ovens go north, fam. They work better, last longer, need less maintenance, and in the case of some brands they literally increase the value of your home.
This house came with one of those standard-issue ovens that you see in every fresh apartment. But I could not afford both oven & home at once. The day I moved in here, I knew that I would run this oven into the ground, and then replace it with An Oven.
My oven is now held together with gaffer’s tape, scratched beyond belief, covered with an intractable layer of carbonite. At one point during my biggest party of the year, the oven took a half-hour to start heating up.
I ordered An Oven last Tuesday. I think they have to build it now? Clearly I’ll write text about it after it arrives.
The boiling frog
You know the whole thing: put a frog in a pot of cold water and heat it up, and the frog will boil, not noticing its fate until it’s too late. And that really is the issue with durable objects. When do you call time on them? There is no framework. Usually the internet gives you a window where you can expect to replace something, but that window is applicable to a world where you are incorrectly buying something geared for planned obsolescence. There’s also your own skill at repairing things, as well as what facilities exist around you to repair what you buy.
Again, no path. You look at the thing qua the thing. You ask what matters about it. Then you look up a new pair of boots and realize what you’re missing.