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)
i think one thing to keep in mind with BIFL is that it’s gonna be painfully expensive, and we tend to have a skewed perspective since a lot of what people buy these days is second hand and thus nowhere near the original sale value.
Like has been said for new BIFL stuff you want to look for business/industrial stuff, or handmade things from passionate people, which is not cheap.
I think it’s pretty unrealistic to expect most of your things to be BIFL unless you can get second hand/inherited things, i’d say think about what things are most important to you and try to invest your money into those few things and find ways to make everything else as minimal and sustainable (and cheap) as possible.
For example people in the medieval era and before generally just wore simple leather turnshoes in the warm seasons, which were fully expected to wear out and they’d need to slap together a new pair every now and then. But that’s fine because literally all you need to make them is some crummy leather scraps!
I use Goodonyou.eco to check out fashion and beauty brand’s ethical standards. It’s not perfect but it gives a pretty good ‘quick view’ of whether they’re dog shit or not.
In terms of BIFL, other than my Sunbeam Coffee filter machine, we’ve taken to buying second hand or locally made furniture.
good advice for finding sustainable, local textile production
There largely isn’t any of this. There’s really very, very little in the way of locally-sourced textiles, and what there is is going to be art rather than functional. I don’t know where you live, but in the US, there are only a handful of mills that remain, and you’d need to be placing a mill order (e.g., hundreds or thousands of yards of fabric) in order to do business with them. OTOH, there are often local tailors that will be able to order high-quality textiles to make bespoke garments for you. The downside is that this is REALLY expensive. For instance, I’m a bit slow at patternmaking, and not the best at fitting, and if I charged only $25/hr, you’d be looking at around $100 for the initial sloper, and probably another $150 to tune the fit. From there, patterning for a specific garment can take a day or more, depending on what you want, and that’s not including cost of materials and sewing time. For a bespoke suit, you’re starting at about $5000 from an experienced tailor.
That aside, there are certainly a large number of things that are buy once, cry once. Take kitchen knives; if you buy a Yoshimi Kato nakiri, a good set of Shapton glass stones (…which, TBF, will probably cost well over $1000), and take care of it, it will easily last your entire life. If you buy furniture from highly skilled carpenters, you’ll likely be buying something that will last over a century as long as it’s not abused; my grandfather made Craftsman-style furniture and cabinetry in the 20s-30s, and I know for certain that a number of his pieces are still around and in use. But buying the kind of quality and craftsmanship that will allow certain products to last for a lifetime is NOT cheap. While expensive doesn’t always mean quality, high-quality is almost never inexpensive.
On the topic of knifes, my cheap store brand knife lasts for 5 years now without ever seeing a sharpening tool. I think knifes are just hard to fuck up.
I have a 12 euro kitchen knife from 2005 that I sharpened twice, and a 8 dollar kitchen knife from Ikea that I never sharpened that’s from 2012, and they both still work fine. I thought I would be sharpening every couple months, but these kitchen knives.
I’m not cutting paper or cans with them, but they cut though tomato so it’s not even that bad. I’m on your team, I think knives are done, we did it, the tech is fully matured
What I’m looking for in a knife is shaving cleanly and easily; a knife can be fairly dull and still cut a tomato.
One test I’ve seen is rolling up a single sheet of paper into a tube, standing it on it’s end, and then cutting diagonally slowly with your kitchen knife. You should be able to cut the tube of paper cleanly, without knocking it over. If not, your knife should be honed or stropped.
It depends on what you want from a knife.
I want a knife that will take and hold an edge, will resist chipping and setting into a bend, but is also fairly easy to re-sharpen. For what I want, san mai forging using plain carbon steels gives nearly the best results. If you want a knife that will be extremely tough and resistant to rusting or staining, plain carbon steels would be a very poor choice. My favorite vegetable knife needs to be cleaned immediately and oiled lightly after every use, and is absolutely not dishwasher safe. Most people would prefer a stainless steel construction over a knife like that.
Different people have different needs. All I want is chopping onions and not worrying about it too much. If you have different needs, then I guess my knife would be pretty bad for you.
American Giant (i think) grows and mills their cotton in America and the garments are made in the US as well. Last I checked. I don’t wanna say it’s BIFL, but I have an American giant hoodie I bought probably 9 years ago that I still pull out every fall and wear until spring. It’s got holes in the elbow patches, but the elbows are double or triple layered, so it’s still warm.
