It's all very tedious. This happens a lot with pretty mundane staples like socks, underwear, bedding, towels, umbrellas, headphones, ... These are all "semi-du

It's all very tedious. This happens a lot with pretty mundane staples like socks, underwear, bedding, towels, umbrellas, headphones, ... These are all "semi-durable" items that get a lot of wear and tear and inevitably need to be replaced every year or two. There really are definite quality differences, and you don't want cheap and nasty, but there's also no point overpaying because anything you get will need replacement in the not too distant future, and it's not like any of these items are status symbols. There are often a lot of marketing hijinks in this space, like "Ralph Lauren" bedding or "Nautica" towels or whatever, where it is clear that the brand is just licensed by some no-name bedding company for product differentiation, instead of developing their own brand known for quality. There are (very few) brands that mostly stick to a good, pretty consistent middle-market level of quality/consistency. e.g. people have mentioned Levis for jeans, LL Bean is pretty good for bedding & clothing and basically have a modest range pretty consistent / high quality stuff for shirts, trousers, etc. Crate & Barrel, Marimekko, etc. are also good usually. I do sometimes wonder if a website/store/brand for consistently good, go-to staples could work. Something like Muji or Uniqlo, or costco "kirkland", or "amazon basics", where the store/house brand is consistently good over time, and there are few other options. I imagine it would be hard to really offer the same consistency over time with shifting supply chains/manufacturers etc, but you could try, or where that's not possible have some "transition"/"upgrade path" like our old model A sucks are no longer available, the closest new options are B, which is slightly thicker, or C, which is slightly longer. Alternatively, there's NYT wirecutter or Consumer Reports and such that basically just tell you the right few options and cut through all the gimicky chaff. I guess this is basically what we lost when department stores went away - a curated, modest selection of go-to items at your price point has now been replaced with millions of options, 98% of which are awful.