"80 Ways to Steal Valuable Minutes for Your Work Day," it contains some good advice, and is worth a look.
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Why are we paying more and getting less?
I had an interesting conversation with my brother and his wife, who along with their daughter were down visiting this weekend. My mother's old range had stopped working and she wanted to replace it with the old-fashioned electric coil model. Discussing the matter with my mom, brother and sister-in-law, I wondered if a smooth top range might be a better purchase. My sister-in-law, who has had a smooth top stove for a few years, said she wouldn't buy one again. Her first preference now would be to convert over to a gas range (not an option in my mom's condominium) and failing that to go with the coil elements. The smooth top was hard to keep clean, she said.
This comment led to a conversation about products that we thought hadn't been improved over time. At the top of the list were pillow-top mattresses. I own one. My brother and his wife own one. My mother owns one. All of them are expensive models. None of us would ever buy one again. You can turn them around but you can't flip them, and they get "body dents" that swallow you up. They just don't have the value--though they cost more--that previous, simpler mattresses did. Another product sore spot was toasters. My brother said their expensive new four-slot toaster just didn't do the job--unlike the 20-year-old model my Mom still uses and which is, of course, no longer available.
I feel my age when I write that "they just don't make things like they used to"…but they really don't. In this age of rampant consumerism, we are buying more (and in many cases, paying more) and getting less on a daily basis. Why is that?
On another subject: One of the Smartbrief enewsletters I receive brought this article on time management to my attention. Called
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Lori Smith, , Editor-in-Chief
Lori Smith is the editor of Gifts and Tablewares, Canada's premiere gifts and tablewares magazine. Written for retailers of gifts, tablewares, housewares, stationery and home furnishing accessories, its objective is to help readers increase their sales and run their businesses more profitably by providing information on new products, merchandising, small business management, customer service, consumer behavior and industry news. The magazine is published six times a year by BIG Magazines, LP, a leading Canadian information company.
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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on March 29, 2010 2:54 PM.
The previous post in this blog was The Emergence of Citizen Marketers.
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