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If you're willing to tolerate not owning things when they're new, survivorship bias can be your friend. I especially recommend saying yes whenever an elderly r

If you're willing to tolerate not owning things when they're new, survivorship bias can be your friend. I especially recommend saying yes whenever an elderly relative / friend offers you a hand-me-down. You'll get things that are no good, to be sure; sometimes trash survives because people have inexplicably taken delicate care of it for decades. But often, you get things of great utility. Wool army blankets from the 1940s. Brace-and-bit drills. Old sets of Encyclopedia Britannica. A flour sifter. A nightstand. A handmade rug. A shearling coat. A sharp machete. Furthermore, accepting these gifts is an act of love; it tells the giver, "it was not in vain that you cared for this thing you can no longer use."

gibspaulding 4y ago
This is great advice! Over the years, most of the shiny new household goods from our wedding registry have ended up donated or binned, and more and more of what we use every day is either inherited or bought used. Estate sale cast iron cookware and shop tools, inherited fiestaware, utensils, and dining room table, a commercial deep freezer from Alejandro's used appliance store. When inheriting or estate sales aren't an option I've actually been buying a lot of used stuff off of eBay lately. PC's (the trick is to select "no OS included" to find the business ones IT departments are discarding), a label maker you could use as a bludgeon in a pinch, a vintage flannel that's actually wool. I've come to really like second hand. Clothes don't shrink when you wash them, boots are already broken in, and things have generally survived past that first failure spike that weeds out the lemons.
phaedrus 4y ago
I have a set of "spade" drill bits for wood that once belonged to someone's grandfather. The operation of this style of wood drill bit is sometimes jokingly referred to as "slapping chunks of wood off" until a hole appears, and I agree - for the ones sold now. Not these ones. They're noticeably sharper and truer than the ones you find now, more perfectly symmetrical in profile and grind, probably a half-dozen other subtle differences. When you drill a hole with one of these bits, all of the shavings are uniform and the sides of hole aren't ragged. There's less vibration, less heat, more progress.

gibspaulding 4y ago

This is great advice! Over the years, most of the shiny new household goods from our wedding registry have ended up donated or binned, and more and more of what we use every day is either inherited or bought used. Estate sale cast iron cookware and shop tools, inherited fiestaware, utensils, and dining room table, a commercial deep freezer from Alejandro's used appliance store. When inheriting or estate sales aren't an option I've actually been buying a lot of used stuff off of eBay lately. PC's (the trick is to select "no OS included" to find the business ones IT departments are discarding), a label maker you could use as a bludgeon in a pinch, a vintage flannel that's actually wool. I've come to really like second hand. Clothes don't shrink when you wash them, boots are already broken in, and things have generally survived past that first failure spike that weeds out the lemons.

phaedrus 4y ago

I have a set of "spade" drill bits for wood that once belonged to someone's grandfather. The operation of this style of wood drill bit is sometimes jokingly referred to as "slapping chunks of wood off" until a hole appears, and I agree - for the ones sold now. Not these ones. They're noticeably sharper and truer than the ones you find now, more perfectly symmetrical in profile and grind, probably a half-dozen other subtle differences. When you drill a hole with one of these bits, all of the shavings are uniform and the sides of hole aren't ragged. There's less vibration, less heat, more progress.