Buy it for Life

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A place to share practical, durable and quality made products that are made to last, with an emphasis on upcycled and sustainable products!

Guidelines:

Things that are well-made and durable (even if they won't last a lifetime) are A-Okay!

Unlike that other BIFL place, Home-made and DIY items are encouraged here, as long as some form of instruction is included in the body of the post.

Videos links are not allowed as post titles, but you may use them in a text post.

A limited amount of self-promotion is accepted, IF the item you are selling aligns with this criteria:

The item must be made with sustainable or recycled materials.
If electronic in some way, the item must be open-source.
The item must be user-serviceable (if applicable).
You cannot be a large corporation.
The post must be clearly marked with a [Self Promotion] tag in your title.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

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166

Is BIFL Still Possible Today? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 2 days ago by rosahaj@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/buyitforlife@slrpnk.net

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Hi there, I came here to the BIFL Lemmy out of suspicion that the reddit posts are just unlabelled marketing, and I was wondering the possibility of sourcing goods that are more to a BIFL standard? In my area, second hand goods tend to be really quite poor in quality (reselling fast fashion) or otherwise not present, and I have not inherited anything that does last. So I would apprecite advice or reccomendations for finding goods at a BIFL standard. I was also wondering if maybe there would be anyone with good advice for finding sustainable, local textile production so that I may be able to tailor what I need without having to buy from the poor selection aforementioned, does anyone know of any of this?

TL:DR I am suspicious that a lot of what is claimed as 'BIFL' has been enshittified, and would like advice on being able to search for sustainable goods for a local area (not specified because I'm hoping for advice with searching, not exactly for specific reccs)

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[–] atempuser23@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Sadly, I do think that many companies aren’t interested in making BIFL products because PROFITS!!! I think the market for BIFL will be more with custom fabricators and small businesses.>

I think it just has more to do with how much it costs to make a products that is BIFL vs features. Some features are nice to have but just can't be made in a way that is BIFL. Think of super-soft and comfortable jeans. They wear much more quickly than the cardboard style fabric. Truly non-stick pans simply wear out.

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 2 points 13 hours ago

For sure. Some things really can't be made to last forever due to their function.

But every attempt should be made to make things easy to repair, or recycle when it's at the end of its lifecycle.

Baking in planned obsolescence is what we tend to see these days, and that's a decision by the company to do that for nothing more than profits.

I wish governments would force manufacturers to make products that last longer than they currently do. Even if they frame it as an environmental initiative.

For instance, non-removable batteries should be so rare that it would be hard to find a product made with one.