apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Amen to that. I learned my cheap furniture lesson in my first apartment after I bought a new $300 couch that lasted all of one year. The subsequent couch, a vintage model, also purchased for $300, has lasted me more than 10 years. I just had it reupholstered in a wonderful and expensive Maharan fabric; I think that couch will be with me for my entire life.

I justify shoes and clothing with cost-per-use all the time. But then hubby turned it back on me with my expensive bathtub. After 2 years he is still calculating cost-per-use!

I agree - but only to a certain point.

Obviously a new $3000 sofa is going to be a better value than a new $300 sofa, as the $3000 sofa will probably last 30 years - probably longer with reupholstering. A $200 pair of mens dress shoes will generally be more comfortable to walk in than a $50 pair.

However, there's a limit where spending more money doesn't always get you more: A $3000 kitchen faucet doesn't work better than a $300 faucet. A $3000 clock doesn't tell time better than a $300 clock. A $100,000 car won't get you to work faster or last longer than a $25,000 car. $10,000 earrings won't make you prettier than $100 earrings.

And a $160 dog bowl won't feed the animal any better than a $16 dish.

The dog bowl wasn't just pricey, it was poorly designed for any actual use. If you love it that much, buy it and use it for fruit or chips or salad. But as a dog feeding station, it wasn't well thought-out. And seriously, who keeps a dog bowl for years and years?

I almost never see posts here about pricey antiques--those are almost always "deals" and the new crap is the expensive artsy-fartsy stuff.

Eating low on the food chain? Snails, plankton, worms and bugs? Not worth it, if you look at the cost-benefit ratio.

You're not going to like the dog dish forever. I just know these things.

You can justify cost per use on certain items you're likely to have, need, and still like many years from now, or that last longer because they are made of quality (furniture, clothing, fixtures, etc.), and you can just as easily get buyers' remorse for spending a ridiculous amount of money in some frenzy of lust for an extravagant tchotchke. If you don't cringe about what else you could have bought with $160 instead of that dog dish every time you see your dog eating, then you really do have too much money.

That is why I cannot justify paying $3000 for a designer sofa. I don't want the same sofa for 30 years.

You should want the same sofa for 30 years though. Reduce, reuse, recycle...

I think value has different meanings to different people, and you have to make up your own mind.

So here I sit on my 21-year-old sofa, which has morphed along with me from Bombay-Company fake-Brit mid-80s chintzy style. It now keeps company with my 40th-birthday Eames LCW, a "Wassily" chair, IKEA Lack side table, awesome $2.99 '60s Goodwill lamp, a beautiful rug, and some real art. I think it was $1500 back in '87, which was a fortune to us then. I love this sofa. My friends love and envy this sofa. I will never get rid of this sofa. Someday it will need reupholstering.

Buy classic.

I found a great chair on the street once. After 3 weeks of wondering why my apartment smelled funny, I narrowed it down to my most recent acquisition... and then realized why it was on the street in the first place.

:(

Eating low on the food chain? Snails, plankton, worms and bugs?

Plants.