Milk crates are BIFL? 🤔

Thank you. I'm just a product of my dad, who grew up through the depression and WWII, when ingenuity and re-use was the norm. His 1940s house's main source of framing was discarded pallets. ~~~~

No offense, but I doubt this. The material and stitching of some shirts I have from the 90s is just vastly more durable than anything you can buy today. I have some Nutmeg Mills and Galt Sand shirts and sweatshirts. That stuff is bomb proof.

I have a hard time engaging in good conversation with people that are so disingenuous and only talking with you to work an angle and get your money. I could ask how they can tell quality and I won’t know if they’re being honest or just telling me things that reinforce their pitch for the stuff they want to sell to me.

Maybe if I happened to already be friends with somebody that was a high-end clothing salesperson that I could just have a straight conversation with instead of being sold to, but yeah, you can’t actually trust anything a salesperson is telling you. Their entire job is to tell you whatever they have to tell you to make a sale.

r/frugal

Wow, I did not expect such a response. I appreciate the clarity very much.

It's subsidized by wage theft and exploitation. All the externalities are someone else's problem

I have a pair of Lucky Jeans that I’ve had for five and a half years now.

Cost me $125.

I’ve had to take them to a tailor twice for a hole in the crotch (not one hole twice but two different holes—I attribute that to leg growth from lifting).

Aside from that and obviously fading, they still look really good and feel great.

I’ve worn and washed them countless times.

In this case, I think you get what you pay for.

Not necessarily, and not if you engage them in good conversation. And you don’t have to buy anything, just ask them “You say this is a high-quality fabric/construction — how do you tell?

oh thats smart!! thanks so much!

$2 is just disturbing. Even with the most brilliant supply chain, the fact a product like underwear can even make it on the shelf for that price is a serious red flag to me. What the hell is it made from? Who made it? How did it get transported here? There’s just no way quality was even remotely factored into the process.

Hydroflask or Zojirushi are my go to.

AH ! I found a solution for our two giant dogs. The question is why screen? If it is just to keep flies outside, look for a chain curtain to hang in your doorway. I've hung two of those on my porch. The flys stay out and the dogs romp right thru it. At the end of summer, I roll it up and take it down.

For sure. Now I just gotta look into a long term sponge/method of cleaning for the nonstick pan lol

thanks!

I work in luxury clothing production. This sort of information isn't typically available to the public, but it exists. In terms of fabric, every textile we use has a technical data sheet we get from the mill that weaves it. That sheet has a ton of things on it including weight, colour fastness, warp and weft shrinkage etc etc. Construction details are in the tech pack for every garment, these are put together by the brand's product development/production team, people like me. It's a blueprint for how we want the factory to make the garment - seam types, fusing, linings etc. One of these documents is called the BOM or Bill of Materials and contains every little thing that goes into the garment right down to thread type. Some brands (good ones) have very detailed tech packs and BOMs and carefully control their garment quality, others are very basic and allow the factory to make a lot of decisions. Again, these documents are proprietary work product and not available to the consumer.

You can educate yourself on things like seam types and construction methods by looking at books on sewing and tailoring. Most of these are for home sewists and don't use industrial methods but will still give you some guidance on how to identify higher quality finishings.

A word on price. High price does not always indicate high quality but a low price always indicates either low quality materials/construction, or inhumane labour practices. It is simply not possible to make a tshirt for $5 with good materials and construction and pay people fairly to make it. We audit every supplier we work with and I visit our factories multiple times a year. They are clean, safe, decent places to work. We produce our own fabrics and I've been to the Italian mill that makes it. One of their print machines is literally the size of a small flat and cost €2 million. Quality costs money.

Ehh I dunno that’s the route I’d go. I can’t trust anything a salesperson steers me toward. They’ll tell you anything to get you to buy. Their goal isn’t to sell you the objectively best, but instead whatever they make the highest margin on.

The book is written by an occupational therapist and she explains why play time and movement are so important for learning.

Those are some true quality “buy it for life” things! You can’t get back the early years. So enjoying them in nature is so important to our family

I am not a parent yet but I absolutely will! I don’t think (at all) this is about barefoot shoes but FWIW I wear those lol. And it made me thinking of that. I think kids’ education must have been worlds better in the past. Classroom learning is sad, especially these days. It’s a nightmare in public schools.

There's a ton of different types of rice. Depends on what you like the most.

Theres also the issue of many of them being grown in soil with high arsenic content. Thats important to some people and limits what brands and types they buy.

No matter what brand you buy, a nice rice cooker will make it so much easier to cook and consistent every time.

It’s an outside school! He goes to school on a farm, they have about 230 acres. Some of it is for growing crops, some of it is forests for hiking. Most of their learning takes place outdoors through question based learning. He will have to switch to public school next year because they don’t have an option for older kids. But it’s been a great experience! Check out the book “barefoot and balanced”

Maybe try a different lid? I have 3 insulated YETI bottles that have never leaked, but I have the screw-on tops.

A nature school? This sounds wonderful. Mind sharing about that?

Is it the top that leaks?

Unfortunately, all of the ones we have started to leak (no matter what brand) after a year or more of constant use (either nature preschool or daily elementary school use). We just replace the tops and they are good to go for another couple years. My only issue is that I dislike the cheaper replacement top style.

I work in clothing production. There are literally tests for every kind of durability you can imagine, made to simulate real-world wear and tear. You send in sample garments from bulk production to a company that specializes in these tests and they put them on a machine that replicates say, two pieces of fabric rubbing against each other 1000 times, or pulling on a button until it pops off. Only some of these tests are legally required (the button pulling for kidswear, for example) but they are available to any brand that wants to know how durable their clothes are.

Ive bought cheap shorts from China that fall apart after a few washes. Ive bought nice shorts from Thailand that last years.

Its all to do with the fabric and thread quality imo.

Theres probably a point at which super expensive is no better than mid range, since style seems to be more important than substance for those expensive brands. They are all made in sweatshops for pennies by underpaid workers.