On some level, we're all renters..

[MagicHour]

Haha, laugh it up. My aunt and uncle plasticized their sofa in the 70s, unwrapped it and then handed it "brand new" down to my grandmother who got like another 20 years out of it.

Originally Posted by FlashUNC

Wut?

This seems like the kind of approach that leads to keeping your couch in one of those plastic wrap things that grandma had.

Life's too short man. Enjoy what you got. Not like you can take it with you. If you're buying things with the eye towards what the next guy down the line is going to do with it, you're not really owning it and appreciating it. That kind of caretaker mentality for most goods just doesn't compute. Use it, let it get a patina and some scars and some stories man. And if it gets ruined at the end, well, it fulfilled its purpose.

Who wants that ugly yellow couch anyways?

[jlwdm]

Originally Posted by MagicHour

Haha, laugh it up. My aunt and uncle plasticized their sofa in the 70s, unwrapped it and then handed it "brand new" down to my grandmother who got like another 20 years out of it.

Too bad they did not keep it wrapped. It would be yours soon.

Jeff

[alterergo]

Originally Posted by jlwdm

Too bad they did not keep it wrapped. It would be yours soon.
Jeff

Or boxed, you could pass it on to kids or grand kids.

[54ny77]

No self-respecting plastic slipcover-filled house was complete without a clear plastic runner from the front door to the kitchen.

[Vientomas]

Well, if you want to get completely existential...the elements which make up our bodies are not ours to keep. They are from the earth and return to the earth after we pass on...we use them for but a short period of time. All of us are renting on borrowed time.

[Clean39T]

Originally Posted by Vientomas

Well, if you want to get completely existential...the elements which make up our bodies are not ours to keep. They are from the earth and return to the earth after we pass on...we use them for but a short period of time. All of us are renting on borrowed time.

All things are impermanent - except the memory of a forgotten anniversary..


Forum Quote du Jour:

"It's just a bike. If you want another and can afford it, buy it. It will be fast, if you pedal it fast." -- Jr59

[batman1425]

Originally Posted by FlashUNC

Life's too short man. Enjoy what you got. Not like you can take it with you. If you're buying things with the eye towards what the next guy down the line is going to do with it, you're not really owning it and appreciating it. That kind of caretaker mentality for most goods just doesn't compute. Use it, let it get a patina and some scars and some stories man. And if it gets ruined at the end, well, it fulfilled its purpose.

I'm in this camp too. I don't take care of things to preserve resale for someone else, I take care of them to help make them last longer for me/get more use out of them. Use (but not abuse) "responsibly" to get maximal return.

Things will ultimately pick up signs of use along the way - that's part of every object's story, and reflective of ownership. Personally, I think it's cool to look at something I've owned for a long time and can recite what I was doing when that scratch or stain or whatever happened. It's all part of of the story.

[MagicHour]

I know...generations could've enjoyed that thing. Style police be damned.

Originally Posted by jlwdm

Too bad they did not keep it wrapped. It would be yours soon.

Jeff

Originally Posted by alterergo

Or boxed, you could pass it on to kids or grand kids.

[Cloozoe]

Renting works for me --forgetting the issues of scams and not being able to enjoy it while you got it.

I'm a really curious kind of person and harbor a healthy skepticism. If I want to know how a bike rides or a classic fly rod fishes, only one way to find out: buy the damn thing and use it for a while. Problem with that approach is, you could quickly find yourself with $100k or more tied up in fly rods and bikes. Some people can afford that; I can't. But I can afford to own $100k worth of stuff sequentially. So I buy carefully, have fun, things come and things go and I find out what's what to my own satisfaction.

PS - As much fun as connoisseurship and the quest for something just a little bit better can be, you ultimately discover that it's just a bike or just a fly rod, albeit nice ones, and you wind up spending more time and energy riding and fishing than acquiring.

[Frankwurst]

Anybody that knows me can tell you straight out that I won't get any security deposit back on my clothes.

[makoti]

Renters take better care of stuff than owners? Buy a rental car. Be a landlord. This idea will make even less sense.

[daker13]

Originally Posted by nash

Sounds like the idea you're getting at is the larger transitory nature of all things... bikes, clothes, etc. And the respect each deserve as something of value. This view can also be extended to the land, our bodies, cultural things, other more intangible things...

I actually see it as the opposite: many of the things we own are surprisingly resilient, and hardly age at all while our skin goes loose, hair falls out, kids grow up, etc. In this sense, many of the things we own are going to outlast us and we indeed 'rent' them. Many of them will fall apart, many end up in the landfill, but some of them will pass on to someone else's hands.

I have a decent record collection at this point. When I die (or maybe when my kid goes to college, ha ha), my heirs are probably going to sell it some record store owner or antiques dealer. He's going to sell it piece by piece, and my collection's going to be parted out to a few hundred different people. Same things with my bikes, other people owned some of them at one time, now I own them, someone else will probably own them later.

[happycampyer]

This thread made me think of this ad campaign:

[livingminimal]

Jesus christ who has time to do any of that

[Clean39T]

Originally Posted by happycampyer

This thread made me think of this ad campaign:

And from there to Pulp Fiction..