Money’s tight, should you even be worrying about things like this?
I think most of us know the feeling of being in a place where the cheapest option is also the only option, and all of the thinking in the world won’t change it. Sometimes even without much to spend you can still find an option that will last, which will make whatever you spend go even farther.

First of all, why does it even matter? Why not just buy the the cheapest version and move on? Depending on what it is you are buying, there is a pretty good chance that that version is going to break much sooner than something of better quality. Bad for your pocketbook, as well as more junk for the landfill. If you make yourself a smoothie every morning and the bargain store blender needs replacing every year, then the sturdy blender with that is two or three times the price is a steal if it lasts a decade.

“Ok, great. I know that already”, you say.

Doesn’t magically triple my blender budget does it?”

Fair enough. If your blender budget buys you the basic model at the store, would it cover the better quality brand secondhand? (If it only stretches far enough to buy the cheapest secondhand blender in the thrift store, that’s still amazing! You kept something out of the landfill and used it to the end of it’s practical life, you fantastic environmentalist you!)

Are there situations that are even better than that though? Can you find both better quality AND a lower price? Well if you are like me, and absolutely adore vintage furniture, you are in luck! Not only is secondhand furniture often found at a great price, a lot of the time it was made with much better quality materials than the full price item bought today. Old couches and chairs can have solid wood frames that make them worth the effort to recover. Dressers built with solid wood instead of particleboard. Be as creative as you want! Fallen in love with a beautiful piece but don’t have space for it? Use a lovely little china cabinet to hold all of your hobby supplies. Use a glass fronted bookcase for a dresser. I have an antique buffet as my tv stand in the living room. Whose going to stop you, the dining room police?

You can follow the same principle with kitchenware too. A lot of things like glass bakewear, cast iron pans, silverware and dishes of all kinds were made very well compared to their modern counterparts. (*cough cough* I’m looking at you, wedding china. Half of mine broke along the same fault lines while my grandparents’ dishes are still in use three generations later.) This isn’t a universal principle though, so do a bit of research before you start searching the thrift stores. Some safety standards were different in the past and there is some debate about the safety of certain older products. I’m not the type to try to alarm you, but it is worth a few minutes to look up what you have touching your food.

You can buy good quality items in almost every category of your life, if you have the money. How do the rest of us choose where to invest? In my life I try to balance a few factors. For starters, I don’t replace things that aren’t broken, regardless of the quality. As long as it is still serving it’s purpose the most economical and environmentally friendly choice is to use what is already in your possession to the end of that item’s useful life. After that I balance things like cost, and frequency of use, as well as if the current version is serving me well.

One of the first long term investment pieces I bought was a cast iron frying pan. We didn’t have a lot of money for extras at the time so I slowly replaced the non-stick items in my kitchen one at a time over several years. They were pieces I could afford and ones I used every day. We have slowly been replacing some of our furniture, again one piece at a time over the years. We still have a few pieces floating around that were hand-me-downs or cheaply made and we have been slowly replacing them with carefully chosen items that bring us joy and won’t need replacing for decades. Where you start will be very personal and there’s no right or wrong answer. Whatever you choose, it is an amazing feeling the first time you cut with a good pair of scissors or open a well crafted drawer, and it is definitely worth the effort.