Ask Lemmy

My Stanley thermos is as good as the day I bought it

More frugal than buy-for-life but: good shoes. Twice the price but they last way longer. It's cheaper in the end.

Sage (Breville) Barista Express. Been around for 8 years. Solenoid valve has been needed to be changed twice but it’s a job I’m confident in doing now and the parts are quite cheap (£25).

I bought it broke and fixed it up. Still makes a quality cup better than anyone else’s at home machine. Mainly because other’s often opt for less complicated but more expensive Nespresso pods (which make weak cereal-heavy flavoured outputs - check the James Hoffman video on that); or cheaper Delonghi’s, which I used to own before upgrading.

However I find Delonghi machines have a particular taste which I think comes from the Easy Serving Espresso system they implement in their machines, which puts a rubber gasket in the basket which a) is used to compensate for the weaker pressure of those machines by creating pressure in the basket rather than from the resistence from the coffee (thus affecting taste from the method of extraction), and b) affects the taste from the rubber itself (as well as its collecting of old coffee grounds).

So for anyone looking for a good quality espresso machine, I’d recommend picking up one of these second hand.

My N64 Got it in 99 and it still works

My Pet Monster. Got it in 86, passed it down to my daughter and it's still holding up like new almost 40 years later.

Boots. Here in the Southern US, boots are very common daily footwear, even for business casual attire. I have two pairs of Lucchesse ropers, one black and one brown. A "roper" has a low, straight heel like a dress shoe rather than a tall angled heel like a more traditional "cowboy" boot. I've probably got 10 years on both pairs and no telling how many times the heels and soles have been replaced. Still look like they just came out of the box. They are also very comfortable if you spend all day on your feet unlike most dress shoes. Lucchesse's are expensive but most high quality footwear is.

A KitchenAid mixer.

An old one.

Technically, we bought two - from goodwill. We cannibalized them for parts, cleaned and lubed all the machinery and reassembled one functioning Frankenmixer. It's been running with no problems for over fifteen years now - and the parts were from the seventies to begin with!

A Riccar vacuum. It's only been about five years but so far so good.

I bought a box of bamboo toilet paper almost a year ago and I still haven’t run out. It was only a 24 pack.