A friend’s refrigerator went out last week after only seven years of use. According to an appliance guy, that was about right.

I can remember having the same avacodo green refrigerator in our kitchen for umpteen years. It wasn’t really bad when we got rid of it; it was just so old that it was a pretty good bet it would give out over the weekend or at some other inopportune time. It was relegated to the garage and a shiny new one took its place.

The same can be said for the range top. It was set in the countertop and had a really cool control panel on the wall. A modern, black, flat cook top took its place and come to find out, its life expectancy is only about seven years. The old cook top made it through 20-some years before it became a questionable risk. It even survived through a small Christmas Eve fire when I left papers a little too close to a burner and a button was inadvertently pushed by an errant item on the counter. Luckily, the mess was quickly swept into the nearby sink and doused with water.

Many other household items have joined the “disposable” list. Washers and dryers, DVD players, boom boxes, TVs and like are no longer “fixtures” in our homes.
It makes me wonder if they are not made as well, if we as consumers have directed the “need” for newer and better every few years. With technology outpacing itself, there is always something faster, better and on the “must-have” list. Computers are practically obsolete by the time we get everything out of the box and set up.

None of our teens own cassette tapes. Wonder what they would think of the 8-tracks I have tucked away from a “few” years back.

We are keeping up with the Joneses, who are keeping up with someone else and so on. Along the way, we have given up reliability, consistency and the satisfaction of getting our money’s worth.

We don’t seem to mind shelling out our hard-earned cash for something that we will be eagerly replacing again in a few years for the latest and greatest model.
The switch on the wall lamp in the spare bedroom took a dive the other day. That lamp has hung on the wall for as long as I can remember. I’m seriously considering  having it fixed.