Cockeyed Optimist

Kafka’s helpful hint this time can save you money and anxiety!

No. 5: Buying household wares

This is not about big-ticket items, like refrigerators, dishwashers, microwave cookers or tv sets — you need to consider those sorts of purchases very carefully and get expert advice (not from a beagle!).

No, what Kafka is talking about here are smaller items, like cookware, mixers, juicers, irons, or even up to as high as vacuum cleaners. The central idea here is making a trade-off between quality, including durability, and price.

Let’s start with cookware. If you look round the displays in a department store, you can find, for example, saucepans with complex coatings that that are guaranteed non-stick, with prices that range into a couple of hundred dollars or more. These are probably very fine items, that will give you good service, and some even have five-year warranty periods.

Then you can go into a supermarket or variety store and see the same size of pan, with Teflon or similar coatings and nice glass lids, for as little as fifteen or twenty dollars. Of course, they won’t last as long as the expensive brands, but even if you get nine months out of them before they start to fail, why just throw them out (and dispose of them properly for recycling) and get another. This way you can get as many years of service for the same outlay as with the high-price items, and you find out which sizes you really use the most. (In our place, we have a big Dutch oven type of pan that we hardly ever bother to bring out.)

The same sort of logic also works for small electrical appliances, like irons, electric jugs, juicers, and I have even seen very good prices in variety stores for televisions, DVD players and, would you believe, sewing machines. Of course, they mainly come from China, but if you look into it, so do some of the big-name brands.

Have a think about it next time you need to make this sort of purchase.

Best wishes from Kafka,

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