Thanks for the post. I get your point.

A few recent examples from my own life:
I own a professional camera, but I didn’t buy it until my non-professional camera body was limiting. I’m glad I waited because now I can articulate the subtle differences that really make this camera spectacular. Two years ago? I wouldn’t have appreciated it properly.

I’m slowly painting every room in my house. I spent some money ($20 each) on very good paintbrushes that make cutting-in as painless as possible. I did NOT go out and get every painting accessory advertised. Nor did I get dollar store paintbrushes . . . well, I confess, I started out with a dollar store paintbrush but it took all of 15 minutes for me to want to burn it.

I have decent cookware but nothing of very high quality. I love to cook but I don’t have much time for it, so I don’t feel I would get value from spending more money. What I own (including my blackened and oft-scrubbed cookie sheets) works fine for me.

I agree with Steven that it usually works to stay in the middle. Protect yourself from the low-end junk, but avoid ultra-high end. That way you avoid the possible financial risk of an expensive item that doesn’t have the durability or quality that the high price supposedly implies.

One other consideration though is the aging of the item and upgrades in technology. Some “industrial” items become inefficient energy sucking behemoths after so many years. Sure, they might still work, but using them can become more a chore than getting a newer, lighter, more energy efficient and well made model.

Clearly you are not going to keep a knife when it reaches a stage where it can’t keep an edge long enough to chop a carrot (and the fact is that you did find yourself in the market for a new knife), so the real variable in this question is where your tipping point is for needing a new knife, whether this is from the perspective of time wasted, food mangled or safety issues.

A clearer example would be of an appliance that would either work or not work (like a hairdryer), rather than discussing the nuances of how many minutes you are losing every other day to getting the item to a state where it temporarily does more or less what you need it to. The focus on minutes lost and attempt to justify the issue by discussing how they accumulate to a lot over the course of three years detracts, in my opinion, from the perceived relevance of what is actually a good point – quality for things you use frequently can often be worth the price, and even save money in the long run.

Buying a $240 Le Crueset cast iron pot so you can make tuna noodle casserole in it is a waste of money.

I too sew a lot, and I had been making do with secondhand irons. When my latest iron died, and I couldn’t come up with another secondhand $1 iron, I bought a new one for about $35. One day I knocked it to the floor and it quit working. During the time I was using this new iron, I found another cheapie $1 iron. It works perfectly well. I see no major advantage for buying the highest quality iron I can afford. I just keep a stash of yard-sale purchased appliances, as back up in the event my current one dies.

I have also been using a $5 yard-sale purchased sewing machine. It has a quirk that makes it less than ideal, but I can work with it. I can afford a $500 machine, but for my needs this used one works just fine. I watch for older model (mainly metal) machines at yard sales.

I third *Quality doesn’t necessarily equal expensive!*

Le Crueset, 350 dollar blender, 80 dollar knives… my grandma, and great grandma, cooked huge meals every day, without trouble, with no such expensive implements. They had arguably the highest frequency of use I will ever see from kitchen implements.

Unless you are a chef, the mercedes benz of kitchen implements are a luxury, and the few minutes you save is paying for the convenience. You can get comparable quality in the middle range. You get to the point of diminishing return on your buck- it’s a parabolic arch of cost-effectiveness, and either end is not an efficient use of money.

Otherwise you did not have a “good, not great” knife, you had a piece of trash.

My favorite quilt, put together from scraps from leftover sewing projects, was essentially free and is by far better than anything I could have bought – at a high price, or a low one.

Junk knives are crappy from day one, not getting progressively worse over the course of two years. Perhaps the knife sharpening skills need honing.

But if there is ALSO a difference in performance each time you use it, then it will become worthwhile much more quickly.
If the two knives worked identically, then it makes sense to just judge the time factor. But given the safety issue of a constantly-dull knife, and the ease and encouragement to cook that come with a good knife, one might still consider it well worthwhile even if it were used only once per month.

The consequences of a failure in reliability also matter. If my hair dryer fails, I am going to go to work with wet hair. It might be financially worthwhile for me to go for a cheaper one if I don’t use it a lot.
If I use a car very rarely, I might be able to get by with something that has higher per-kilometre maintenance costs, but if the rare use is for long trips in the mountains, it’s worthwhile for me to pay more for reliability, even on such infrequent use, since the consequence is higher.