A fter living with a woefully inadequate kitchen for ten years, we borrowed enough money from my 401(k) for a new one. With the help of an electrician, a plumber, and a designer provided by the cabinet supplier, I was able to transform an ugly, virtually useless room into something we weren’t embarrassed to own. Included was a dishwasher, which is something we had done without for more than a decade. I had the dishpan hands to prove it.
Three years passed, and circumstances led us to sell the house and move. A month after the agreement of sale had been signed, I removed the wooden kick plate to vacuum under the dishwasher.
The back of the kick plate, and the floor behind it, were wet. Because the dishwasher had only a one-year warranty and I hadn’t opted for extended maintenance, it cost $250-more than half the cost of the original dishwasher to repair.
Imagine a world where things lasted forever!
In the 1951 British film, The Man in the White Suit, Alec Guinness portrayed a mild-mannered inventor who came up with a fiber that never wore out. That meant, of course, that clothing would last forever-or until it went out of fashion.
The result would be that most manufacturers and retailers would shut down. The indestructible fiber never made it past the laboratory door. Clothing, like just about everything else we own or use, wears out eventually and requires replacement.
