Buy it for Life

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A place to share practical, durable and quality made products that are made to last, with an emphasis on upcycled and sustainable products!

Guidelines:

Things that are well-made and durable (even if they won't last a lifetime) are A-Okay!

Unlike that other BIFL place, Home-made and DIY items are encouraged here, as long as some form of instruction is included in the body of the post.

Videos links are not allowed as post titles, but you may use them in a text post.

A limited amount of self-promotion is accepted, IF the item you are selling aligns with this criteria:

The item must be made with sustainable or recycled materials.
If electronic in some way, the item must be open-source.
The item must be user-serviceable (if applicable).
You cannot be a large corporation.
The post must be clearly marked with a [Self Promotion] tag in your title.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

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SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net

Is BIFL Still Possible Today? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 8 hours ago by rosahaj@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/buyitforlife@slrpnk.net

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Hi there, I came here to the BIFL Lemmy out of suspicion that the reddit posts are just unlabelled marketing, and I was wondering the possibility of sourcing goods that are more to a BIFL standard? In my area, second hand goods tend to be really quite poor in quality (reselling fast fashion) or otherwise not present, and I have not inherited anything that does last. So I would apprecite advice or reccomendations for finding goods at a BIFL standard. I was also wondering if maybe there would be anyone with good advice for finding sustainable, local textile production so that I may be able to tailor what I need without having to buy from the poor selection aforementioned, does anyone know of any of this?

TL:DR I am suspicious that a lot of what is claimed as 'BIFL' has been enshittified, and would like advice on being able to search for sustainable goods for a local area (not specified because I'm hoping for advice with searching, not exactly for specific reccs)

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[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 13 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

BIFL is certainly possible, and there are some things that aren't for life but still last a long time.

Unfortunately you really need to look for them.

It's unfortunate that product reviews don't really focus on this kind of thing.

Another annoying aspect of searching for BIFL things is that (and I have no evidence of this, it's just a feeling), whenever I search for BIFL things and search results take me to BIFL communities, it's always the same companies mentioned, to the point where it often feels like company astroturfing.

[–] Shawdow194@fedia.io 6 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

To be fair, only a minority of companies produce products consistently that last longer than their competitors

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

That's true, and part of why I say I don't have any proof/that it's just a feeling of mine.

Maybe I'm just being overly pessimistic, but there's a few companies that BIFL on Reddit seem to really like and never shut up about. Maybe my fears are wrong though.

Regardless, this Lemmy BIFL community is so small it won't even be on companies' radars, so I'm not worried about it here for the time being