#HTE

Finally: A Retailer That Only Sells Things That are Built to Last

I am so sick of the fact that we must constantly buy things, throw them out and buy new ones. I can’t stand the appliance that breaks, the cheaply-made tool that fails, the object that’s suddenly rendered entirely useless because one small plastic irreplaceable hinge has failed.

Tara Button is sick of it, too, and resolved to do something about it. Button ditched her career in advertising to start Buy Me Once, an online retailer that searches far and wide to find manufacturers who actually build things that were made to last.

“In a world where we build satellites and send people to space, we can make a kettle that doesn’t break after three years,” Button told Mother Nature Network.

[And yet] we haven’t been able to find a Buy Me Once electric kettle. The guarantees from the companies are really short, and online reviews say they all break really soon. For me, that’s not good enough…. There used to be kettles that lasted longer. If you find a kettle from the 1950s, they often still work. That kind of thing gets my goat.

While UK-based Button hasn’t been able to find a kettle yet, she has found other objects to populate eight current categories: Clothes, kitchenware, shoes, furniture, toys, accessories, tools and beauty products. (And she’s looking for more, soliciting suggestions here.)

The Buy Me Once website has also started an Articles & Tips section, featuring hints on how to reduce your possessions and advice for how to make the objects you do own last longer. Thus far the section is sparsely populated—it seems it just went live in December—but hopefully it will grow in density, even as the amount of things you must buy over and over again will hopefully reduce.