Buy Locally—Buy Secondhand

My husband and I have been together for over thirty years now. Yeah, we can't get over it either.

This longterm commitment to mutually supportive housekeeping means that our kitchen equipment—pots, pans, dishes, etc.—is pretty well set.

So it's an event if we need to add something to our repertoire. But it happens.

We don't use a blender every day but there are some family favorites (cream of carrot soup, potato-leek soup, etc.) when we really can use this piece of equipment.

About six months ago, the blender in our cupboard accidentally fell to the floor where the rim of its glass container got chipped, badly chipped, leaving a jagged, sharp edge. We looked for a replacement container for a while. (Replacement? Oh no, not a replacement—must buy new!!) But since nothing in our culture is manufactured so it can be fixed when broken, our search was futile.

It was with a heavy heart that we made our way down to THE shopping strip in our area, the dreaded, crowded, ugly Route 12A in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, that no-sales-tax haven where you can live, freeze and die waiting to make a lefthand turn.

There in one of the dreaded, crowded, ugly chain stores (I'm sure you can sense a theme developing here), we purchased a new blender, one that came with a second container claiming to be genetically linked to the food-processor family of appliances.

As I noted earlier, we don't use a blender every day but often enough to make this purchase worthwhile—or so we thought.

I was making supper not too long after this purchase, a soup that called for blending. It was only the second time we had a use for this whirling appliance. I turned the blending container over to make sure that the screw-on bottom piece holding the blade in place was tight—and the plastic of the screw-on bottom piece broke in my hand.

Less than one month old, used only once, now useless.

Which brings me to the merits of shopping secondhand. I LOVE secondhand stores, especially the two Good Buy Stores run by a non-profit called Southeastern Vermont Community Action (SEVCA). Whenever I need a replacement glass or something to toss over the chair that Goldie has claimed as her own, I hit the Good Buy stores.

Now I'm on a hunt for a new (to me) blender that I will purchase secondhand. No more chain stores for me.

I figure it this way—whatever gets donated to a secondhand store has already passed the ready-made junk test. In other words, only the good stuff (OK, sometimes the unuseable stuff as well) makes it to the secondhand stores because everything that's going to break is already in the landfill—which I will readily agree is a whole other issue to address.

I figure that whatever I pick up at a secondhand store is sure to be of better quality than anything I can buy at the dreaded, crowded, ugly chain stores that sell things with a planned obsolescence so precisely calculated, it kicks in at the point of purchase.

Buying secondhand should be right up there on the list of living-the-good-life virtues, right next to buying locally.