It seems to me that in our culture, there’s a widespread trend of buying lots of stuff, as soon as you can, for as cheaply as you can.  This brings me back to the title of this post.  Quick, Quality, Quantity, pick two.

I want it all, and I want it now

You can certainly have high quality stuff, in large quantities, but it won’t be quick.  It will take time until you own it, which of course includes paying off credit cards used to buy it.  Or you can have high quality stuff, right now (quick), but not very much of it.  Or you can have a lot of stuff, right now, but it won’t be very high quality. 

Unfortunately, I think that this is the mentality that stores like Wal-Mart  promote.  Get everything you think you need, right now, for cheap.  But most of it’s really bad quality.  All ethical issues aside, most of what Wal-Mart sells for cheap is cheap for a reason.  It’s made cheaply.

The part of this that causes me major heartburn, is that it sends the message that quality is expendable.  Just ignore quality, focus on how much you can get.  While this is great in the short term, it breaks down in the long term because of more frequent repairs and replacements.

Learning to appreciate less for more

The idea of spending more money to get less stuff is a pretty direct affront to the mentality that most of us hold.  If presented with an empty living room, most of us would choose to fill it up with a sofa, loveseat, and recliner, TV, and entertainment center, with enough money left over to buy a coffee table.

But what if we made the decision that instead of buying all that stuff, we were going to buy just two pieces of furniture that would last for 15 years.  That’s a really hard decision to make when you’ve traditionally placed a high value on quantity over quality.  If we make that decision, we’ll end up with more comfortable furniture and we’ll worry less about spills because the fabric will be stain proof.  The reality is, for most of us, living that way takes longer.  You can’t have the room filled up right away, because you’re valuing quality over both quantity and quick.

Choosing wisely

Knowing that the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other before settling in the middle, I feel that it would be careless not to mention that price does not equal quality.  Many times one is an indicator of the other, but there’s more than one way to skin a cat.  The rule of thumb I use is this.

Buy the highest quality items you can afford to pay for with cash.

That simple rule keeps you focused on quality, as well as financial stewardship, and that can’t be a bad thing.

The things you own end up owning you.

It sounds absurd, but in the end, I believe it’s true. And here’s why. The things you own need to be cared for if you want to enjoy them. The more things you own, the more things you have to take care of. The more things you have to take care of, the less time you have to enjoy them. Eventually you get to the point where you’re not using certain things, but you still have to take care of them. At that point, that thing owns you. It is happy to sit there and rust, but if you let it do that, you’re the one who has to look at it, think of the money you wasted, feel guilty about not caring for it. It owns you. (And let’s not even talk about the stress that comes from worrying about something happening to those precious toys.)

Take my pool for instance. I love the idea of having a pool. I used to imagine myself coming home every day and going for a swim. The problem is reality. In reality, leaves fall in my pool every day. So do frogs, and sometimes birds. They often die in there. So my vision of jumping in the pool right after coming home from work is postponed by at least 20 minutes of work cleaning up the pool every time I want to use it. It will sit there and collect leaves and dumb thirsty animals whether I take care of it or not. Whether I ever take a swim, it will still run out of chemicals and turn green. I must take care of it if I even want the possibility of using it. It owns me.

I also have a really nice miter saw. I don’t use it. So I put it in my shed. Now it’s starting to corrode. Sure it doesn’t take much maintenance to keep it inside, but it takes up space. Precious space. If I didn’t own it, not only would I get more space in my laundry room, but I’d have one less thing to worry about taking care of.

There’s something to be said for things that you get to use, but not own. Chances are, if you have to leave your house to go use something, you won’t need to do anything to it before you use it. And when you’re done, you just go home. Someone else cleans it, someone else takes care of it, and you can get back to doing whatever else it is that you really care about.

I think I’m approaching a point in life where I want to own the fewest amount of things that take the least amount of maintanance.