We live in a society where old is bad and new is good. The idea of tossing out old stuff and acquiring new comes to light more than usual when the new year rolls in, but is that always good?
Sure. Sometimes we need to update, but are we learning to also give up too quickly? Back in the day there were more repair shops for appliances and electronics. These days items are manufactured so that they become more expensive to fix than to just dump the malfunctioning unit and buy a new one. I wasn’t raised that way. We generally fixed something until it just couldn’t be fixed anymore, but then, I guess products used to hold their value better.
Here are some examples from my world:
*We’ve had our HD, flatscreen, gazillion inch TV for several years now. In the last couple months we have noticed a growing constellation of white dots where the pixels are going out. In the old days a TV could be repaired, but there really isn’t much we can do to fix this, so when we can no longer stand people with glowing white freckles, we will be forced to buy a new one (first world problem, I know, but whatever).
*Our microwave spin table tray stopped spinning. At first it was random, and then it was fairly consistent, burning our popcorn, which is a staple in the Harper house. My husband was certain we had to junk it and get a new one. I don’t like to spend unnecessary money, so I cleaned it, thoroughly, and it spins almost all the time again now. So apparently maintaining and cleaning your stuff can go a long way. Who knew?
*To that effect, we have a shower head that we neglected to clean properly from the beginning and though we can clean it up now, some of the parts corroded off, so we can improve it, but not entirely, because we were lazy before.
*This next one is my favorite, and it’s a good thing Robert doesn’t read all my posts or he may be mad at me for this one, but it’s just too funny not to include. He has uniform shirts to wear for work, button downs. One shirt sat around for a while so I asked him why and he said he was probably going to have to throw it out. I assumed he had a bad coffee spill or ripped it or something. I asked why and he replied, “It’s missing a button.” First of all, we have almost as many extra buttons in my makeshift sewing kit as there are inches in our TV, and the only things I can actually sew are the wound repairs in our dogs’ toys and buttons. Then I remembered that I found a button on the dryer and had been trying to locate what it belonged to. Turns out that button came off the darn shirt and had been sitting there waiting to be reunited. An easy fix for an otherwise perfectly good shirt.
Sometimes old stuff has more character and class than their newer counterparts. There is a reason antique stores exist. Also, with all our technology today, we tend to just be in a hurry to mass produce stuff, and quality is kept at more of a minimum. Sadly, it feels as though we live in a disposable world.
caverns of my mind 