Buying Well

The cheapest option costs you the most. This was true in 1905 and it has not improved with time.

In my years of service I watched the household accounts closely enough to observe a pattern that repeated itself without variation: the master’s father bought one pair of good boots and had them resoled three times over twelve years; a younger cousin bought inexpensive boots every season and spent, in total, roughly twice the amount for footwear that never once fit properly after the first week. The arithmetic was not ambiguous. It simply required someone willing to do it.

This principle applies to everything you own. A well-made kitchen knife, kept sharp and stored correctly, will outlast your tenancy in whatever flat you currently occupy. A cheap knife will dull in weeks, bend at the heel, and find its way into a drawer with nine other cheap knives, all of them useless, none of them discarded. You will have spent more on the collection of failures than you would have spent on the single good blade, and you will have cut nothing cleanly in the interim.

The same holds for clothing. A wool coat from a reputable maker, brushed after each wearing and stored with cedar in the warmer months, will serve you for a decade or longer. The synthetic alternative from whatever rapid-fashion concern is currently advertising on your telephone will pill within a season, lose its shape within two, and sit in a landfill within three, where it will remain for approximately four hundred years, which is a remarkable commitment to permanence from a garment that could not commit to lasting through a single winter.

Tools follow the same law. A good set of screwdrivers, a proper hammer, a reliable drill: these are investments that repay themselves the first time you do not have to replace them. The bargain set from the discount bin is a bargain in the same way that a leaking roof is an opportunity for ventilation.

Household goods are no exception. Cheap bedsheets grow thin and rough. Cheap towels shed lint until they are more decorative than functional. Cheap cookware warps, scorches, and distributes heat with the consistency of a rumour.

Here, however, I must add a qualification, for the principle of buying well does not mean buying expensively. These are not the same thing, and confusing them is a common and costly error. The most expensive option is frequently the most expensive because someone has spent a great deal of money telling you about it; the advertising budget is baked into the price, and you are paying for the privilege of having been persuaded. A hand tool from a firm that has been making hand tools for eighty years and has never once placed an advertisement during a sporting event will often outperform the fashionable brand that arrived last year with a sleek website and a celebrity endorsement. Reputation built by use is worth more than reputation built by promotion.

The test is simple. Before you buy anything of consequence, ask two questions: how long will this last if I maintain it, and can it be repaired when it fails? If the answer to the first is “years” and the answer to the second is “yes,” you are buying well. If the answer to either is a shrug, you are buying twice.