We’ve become a Throwaway society

We all know the pleasure of buying something brand new, the aura of freshness that comes when you first open the package. For me, this comes with an air of excitement as the packaging falls away, and the new item is first taken out still in its protective wrapping. That distinctive smell of ‘new’ in the air comes with the item’s promise radiating forth. Very often, as you open the package up, there’s a smell that comes with it, a real scent, not just a metaphorical one; it’s the smell of newness. When it comes to cars, they’ve tried to bottle that new car smell, which we all seem to know, though I think we might be collectively horrified if we knew what chemicals that produce it. All of this excitement, we feel for something new.  Most of the time, we’re replacing something; BUT what happens to the old one?  We’ve Continue Reading

Rise of the Machines – the appliances that fought back!

This is a woeful tale of appliances that decided to strike out at their owners, causing grief and strife at the worst times! Thankfully these appliances at least had the presence of mind not to do this all at once. Today I write as the last of our pretty new appliances has decided to stop working correctly, in this case, the clothes dryer has stopped heating. Let me back this up a touch and paint the full story. When we got and moved into our current house, we completed a significant renovation and rebuilt the kitchen getting all new appliances. This was just over 7 years ago. Just to make sure it’s really clear these were brand new appliances. We specifically didn’t buy the lowest quality ones, we checked reviews and while the appliances weren’t top of the line, they were supposed to be pretty good. For the first three Continue Reading