I know in our throw away society we actually buy some stuff knowing we'll be buying a replacement in the future rather than try to repair the old, but I hate the idea of HAVING to buy new because it's more cost effective and wasting what's left. Here's my gripe and it's about tents!
On our recent holiday it was found that one of us didn't have the poles in their tent bag. No problems - we'll buy some tomorrow we thought. For a start, you have trouble finding anyone who stocks them, then they come in different sizes (holes in the rods not the actual rods), and they seem to come in packs of 4 when it takes about 12 rods to make 1 complete pole. As he needed 3 complete poles he needed about 36 rods. If we could have found them it would have cost about $360.00! Cost of a new tent - $70.00 which comes complete with poles and pegs, and a perfectly good tent thrown away when they remembered they'd used his poles for the kids tent 'cos theirs broke last year.
Two days later the grandkids tent rods broke and went through the roof of the tent. Knowing what we knew now it was a case of another brand new tent - no patching the hole and replacing the broken rod like in the old days.
Three more days on and MY rods did the same thing! Bye bye tent.
Coming from a family that's quite thrifty - I found it heartbreaking to throw away 3 tents!!!!! But we couldn't think of anything they could be used for and we knew the cost of replacing the rods wasn't worth it. What a waste! I actually cut the waterproof bottom out of mine to use as extra waterproofing under another tent and I cut the ropes, toggles, rings etc. off to use again..................one day (probably never).
What else do you know of that falls into this sort of category?
On our recent holiday it was found that one of us didn't have the poles in their tent bag. No problems - we'll buy some tomorrow we thought. For a start, you have trouble finding anyone who stocks them, then they come in different sizes (holes in the rods not the actual rods), and they seem to come in packs of 4 when it takes about 12 rods to make 1 complete pole. As he needed 3 complete poles he needed about 36 rods. If we could have found them it would have cost about $360.00! Cost of a new tent - $70.00 which comes complete with poles and pegs, and a perfectly good tent thrown away when they remembered they'd used his poles for the kids tent 'cos theirs broke last year.
Two days later the grandkids tent rods broke and went through the roof of the tent. Knowing what we knew now it was a case of another brand new tent - no patching the hole and replacing the broken rod like in the old days.
Three more days on and MY rods did the same thing! Bye bye tent.
Coming from a family that's quite thrifty - I found it heartbreaking to throw away 3 tents!!!!! But we couldn't think of anything they could be used for and we knew the cost of replacing the rods wasn't worth it. What a waste! I actually cut the waterproof bottom out of mine to use as extra waterproofing under another tent and I cut the ropes, toggles, rings etc. off to use again..................one day (probably never).
What else do you know of that falls into this sort of category?