Whenever I buy clothes they always end up getting holes quickly, I burn through socks fast, my bags keep breaking, my phones magically shit themselves and my chargers melt. I’m sick of everything being a wear part and I’m wondering where people get things that last.
Anker is the only brand I use anymore for chargers and cords.
I’m fairly hard on clothes, I expect most things to wear out. Carhartt pants stay intact long enough to be acceptable to me. I’m trying to lose weight cause pants last longer for me when my thighs aren’t rubbing together. Carhartt coats are good. Socks, I get a big pack from walmart, I think I bought their third cheapest option and they’ve been going good for twoish years. I wear boots out in about a year.
Stihl small engines with ethanol free gas.
I currently drive and old Jeep with 260k miles, and have a 20 year old chevy tahoe with 320k miles. Find vehicles that have been taken care of and continue to take care of them.
I got a heck of a deal on a GoRuck bag and I’ve been very pleased.
If you can be more specific with what you are looking for, I can try to help more.
“Buy 100% American made! That’ll ensure it’ll last forever!”
In all seriousness I’m not sure. Tons of things aren’t bifl and aren’t meant to be, they have a natural lifespan. The problem is that the natural lifespan in the US is cut unnecessarily short for such things because Walmart wants to keep selling you stuff.
You could try making your own clothes but it’s hard and time consuming to do that for everything. Having an economy divorced from production is unfortunately going to become even worse of a drag as time goes on. It’s why I’m sounding the alarm bells and begging all my friends and family to get off the sinking ship that is the west. They won’t listen, but I do it because I care, and maybe someone will listen.
I’m in China, and in Asia in general, people have access to affordable high quality tailors and fabrics. I’ve noticed products I’ve bought off of pinduoduo are better quality than products I’ve bought off temu, despite it being the same company. There’s also the fact that there is a lack of recourse when your seller is halfway across the world.
The thing is, you aren’t going to find many options for affordable stuff outside China, so I believe looking for labels like “American made”, and “Italian made” is not the answer. Chinese logistics, manufacturing, production, automation, quality… it’s pretty close to the best value in the world, even the cheapy things sold in the US. The only way you could do better is with actual real slave labor like in Bangladesh or India.
While I was in the US and doing my own research into all this was the best course of action for me was to basically buy the cheap Chinese good off of Amazon, tenu, wish, Shein, whatever and aggressively use the return policy if quality wasn’t up to snuff. Learn to look at stiching, fabric, and other markers of quality, never buy the cheapest thing from a Chinese retailer, a $3 tank top from Shein can be terrible but a.$30 dress can be amazing.
100% make sure to never pay the Walmart/target/bullshit markups, unless you absolutely need to assess the items quality in person and are willing to pay the premium to do so. If a cheap flimsy shirt that gets destroyed in a month is $3, pay the $3, don’t pay $30.
Once your clothes get worn through, learn to patch/darn/mend. Conspicuous mending can be beautiful and really cool.
And shop at thrift stores and see if you can snag something good.
So much stuff like that is just priced right out of the range any reasonable person would buy it. I feel like things that were very high quality and used to cost like 2x, 2.5x what the “cheap” versions cost, these days cost as much as 16x the price of the cheaper options, with some going way beyond that.
Just pure inflated price. I try not to take it personally, its just mindless undirected greed, but it really feels intentionally directed at the working class to keep us from having the same “stuff” as the wealthy idiots overpaying for everything
I obsessively research things or intentionally buy cheap anticipating breakage.
I’ll list what I do for the things you mention but obviously it’s just my experience:
Clothes:
Thrift high quality clothes. Have to literally feel the fabric and judge the stitching and slowly learn brands that often have decent quality for your style. You can also look for cheap mid-quality clothes and they’ll still be way better than the usual H&M or Target stuff. It will depend on where you live.
Roll the dice on AliExpress. Sometimes the stuff is great and has reinforced stitching (certain sock brands, for example). Sometimes it’s paper thin garbage. Read the reviews and look for items with many reviews. Also consider finding one of the groups that uses private links to buy branded dupes. I haven’t done that in a long time but it seems to be something you can still do.
Bags:
It really depends on the kind of bag I guess. But here are some ideas:
Brands with really good warranties will either have good stuff or will give you a new item if their stuff breaks down fast. Patagonia, for example (they also sell to the US military…). Timbuk2 is also decent. You can also judge the quality here by the material, Denier rating, and stitching.
AliExpress “tactical” backpacks are pretty decent. The ones with lots of reviews. As a bonus they’re great for on-the-ground actions because they blend in.
Fjallraven sometimes has good stuff. Most items that use Cordura (any brand) will hold up pretty well.
You can also thrift bags. I have found fantastic backpacks, $300 backpacks, for $30 at thrift stores.
Phones:
I’ve had good luck with phones. I shoot for well-reviewed phones in the $300-$400 range. There’s also that guy that beats up phones to review their sturdiness. It can help you decide on which ones to avoid. OnePlus phones are usually a pretty good bet. If you want to run alternative ROMs there’s a big incentive to get a Pixel of some kind.
Chargers: I just buy Anker exclusively. No problems like melting yet.
Many categories of manufactured goods are becoming higher quality and cheaper due to Chinese productive capacity. See if there are just-as-good Chinese niche products in a given category. The nice ones will often be more expensive than the cheapest Chinese items but still 1/5-1/3 as expensive as the Western name brans stuff they are competing with. For example, there are many backpacks by lesser known Chinese brands that are reportedly very high quality and are that much cheaper. They’re very popular in East Asia and you can often find them on AliExpress if you search carefully.
I’m gonna dispute the rec on pixels. I had to give up on them (and therefore the Roms that only support them :( ). I think they might have gotten worse over the years. I had a 3a for a long time but after I had to replace that I couldn’t find anything stable.
When they break the parts are $$$$ to replace. Guy at the phone repair place told me its cause they are niche so not a lot of 3rd party manufacturer. Can only buy from google. When my screen broke it would have cost more to fix than the whole thing costed to buy on eBay.
Better to buy a more popular device, can get parts more likely.
I can second fjallraven backpacks, mines still going strong after a decade. Recently found it’s because they’re made with best Korea’s national fabric, vinylon.
Maxpedition makes classically sturdy and reliable bags and pouches. Has the tactical look, but you might find something that fits your style.
I went through a phase of only buying MILSPEC rated gear. My watch is nearly 20 years old and never changed the battery or set the time. It sets the time from the atomic clock every night and charges from solar. Casio G-Shock.
Many expensive things don’t hold up. They’re just a brand name or status symbol.
There’s also a trend of capitalist vultures buying up well-known and trusted brands and then squeezing them for all their worth by changing manufacturing to something much cheaper and lower quality and slapping the logo on it. Eventually this stops working because the brand loses caché.
I have a toaster from the Bundesrepublik, still works great. Don’t worry tho, I pair it with Oolong is from the PRC so the Hitler particles are neutralized in the stomach before entering the body proper.
I buy op shop clothes almost exclusively, shit made in the 90s that has decent stitching and wasn’t made to last just one season (though the flood of HM, UNIQLO, Zara stuff doesn’t stop. I used to volunteer too when I was unemployed and we’d toss bagfuls daily). I’m gunna learn how to darn cos yeh, going through a pair of socks a month is unsustainable.
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