September 13th, 2018

Let's have a respectful moment of silence in memory of my old hairdryer.  It looks good doesn't it?  And it went, much too soon.

I was in the midst of drying my hair the other morning, and suddenly I heard a little "pop" sound and then there was that awful bitter burning smell that I could taste and what little air wheezed out of the old girl was cool.  How sad.   And by the way, it always happens in the middle of drying/styling the hair. Not at the beginning when I could have just let the entire thing air-dry or at the end when I was already done.  No.  Exactly half way through when one side of my hair was starting to look fairly decent but I hadn't yet touched the other side.

I don't know about you, but if I air-dry my hair, it looks COMPLETELY different than if I blow dry my hair.  So that day I felt unbalanced all day.  Left side was one .....okay let's call it a look.... and the right side completely different.  Not pretty.

It felt to me as if I had just bought the darned thing too.  But as it turns out it was about two years ago.  Shortly after we moved here the exact same thing happened and off I went to the store and bought a new one.  Two years just seems to be a very short period of time for an electronic piece of equipment to last. Yes I use it almost every single day, but it's not as if I don't take proper care of my things. 

Tim reminded me I didn't do my homework and read reviews and that since I am so doggone tight with a buck that I tend to buy inexpensive things I shouldn't expect them to last very long.  His general feeling is that you get what you pay for. And sometimes, I agree, sometimes that is true.  But not always.  And he is  also right in that I didn't read any reviews ahead of time. I didn't have time! I needed to dry my hair!  And also I didn't think of it the previous time.  So this time, I did.

I went online and read reviews of various hairdryers.  All sorts of brands and price tags.  First of all I was shocked at how expensive some of them are! Holy Cats!  I'm not saying that they aren't worth the money, just I cannot make myself spend that kind of money on a hair dryer.  I'm not a famous person who needs to look camera ready every day.  I also don't have really complicated or super thick hair that needs extra special tending.  Heck, I don't even have a paying job that requires that I look business good. Nope, I'm really only bothering to please myself and apparently I set the bar pretty low.

Secondly, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my hairdryer, the one that just died, got 4 stars.  That's 4 out of a possible 5 stars, by the way, not 4 out of 20 or something crazy like that.  So honestly, 4 stars isn't bad at all.

So from this collective information I am going to make a leap here and surmise that perhaps, two years is the built-in obsolescence of the average 4 star hair dyer.  I'm only guessing you understand.  I have no scientific studies to back me up. But since I paid less than 20 bucks for it, I suppose that is reasonable.  (well not to me but then again, I'm ridiculous).

Did you know that the expected length of time for the average large appliance such as a washing machine or a refrigerator to last is only 7 years?  True.  Think about how much money you spent on your last washer.  And that's for only 7 years.  Even if you divide the original price by 7 to get the actual "cost per year" it's still crazy. 

I know that I'm seriously dating myself here but I remember when, for example, a Maytag Washing Machine was expected to last twenty years or more!  I believe that to be a good cost per year!  Nowadays even Maytag is in the 7 year category.  And of course the lower level appliance you buy, the lower the expectation is. 

I believe that it's possible to still build appliances, be they large or small, that last twenty years. But in our consumer driven society, that doesn't make the companies nearly as much money as a 7 year large appliance or a 2 year small appliance and therefore, they don't.   And people will continue to throw out the one that doesn't work and buy a new one. Maybe even a more expensive one.

So with those thoughts in mind I went to good old Walmart and bought a new hair dryer:

Looks remarkably like the old one doesn't it?  That's because it is.  It was still less than 20 dollars and my feeling is that if whatever hairdryer I buy is only going to last me two years, I'm not going to spend one more penny than I absolutely half to on it.

Yup I am frugal, cheap, miserly, tight with a dollar, whatever you want to call it.  But I'm now set for the next two years and today my hair looked pretty good.