This will probably be one of my more boring posts, but I find myself sometimes fascinated with the philosophy of owning things and the usage of money. In general, I’ve long believed that the more you use something, the better, at least when it’s something that can be “used” (which is to distinguish it from, say, static furniture like bookshelves or decorations). But I realized there’s a nuance to this I didn’t consider before.
I bought a silicone hamburger bun mold recently, and it works wonderfully. I started measuring out my dough into equal portions and then using the mold to bake the dough. The mold I have fits 6 buns, but this isn’t enough to accommodate all of the dough, so I want to buy a second mold [the extra dough rises while it waits for the first batch to bake, so it’s hard to reuse the mold before the extra dough gets wonky]. But should I buy a mold that fits 4 buns, or another mold that fits 6 buns? I decided that it makes more sense to buy another mold that fits 6 buns, because this would allow me to make 12 buns in one afternoon, which will last me longer before the next batch.
And that’s when it occurred to me: I will need to tweak my recipe to make enough dough for 12 buns, but this is good because it saves me the effort of making buns more frequently. In a sense…if you are going to own a bread machine, the goal is to use it, but the emphasis belongs more on the product created from the appliance than the usage of the appliance itself. The more you use a bread machine, the quicker it will wear out, in theory. Granted, you have to balance bulk production or purchases against the time-frame in which something like food remains fresh (which is why buying spices in bulk rarely makes sense for individuals), so if you rarely eat bread, it makes more sense to make it in small batches, but the value of owning a bread machine and making hamburger buns is more what it produces than the number of times you use it. Which now raises the question: how do you measure the quality of your decision to purchase such an appliance if this is true?
Of course, there are several ways to look at this. One is health. Making my own bread means avoiding the garbage ingredients that are often put into bread. Big win. The other obvious perspective, though, is the cost per usage factor. If you are using an appliance, you are getting value out of it, at least in theory.
It’s kind of like automotive tools. They can save you a lot of money, but the goal, strictly speaking, is not to use them. The goal is to perform a repair – when it becomes necessary – yourself, and save money over paying somebody else. Likewise, the goal of owning cooking appliances is not simply to use the appliance, the goal is to make good food.
So…maybe the better question is…does the thing help you achieve its intended goal? Obviously, a food appliance not being used at all is not helping you achieve the intended purpose of making good food, but if the appliance helps you make good food that is later stored [the freezer, for my buns], and you don’t actually use it very often as a consequence, this is still a good measure of its usefulness. The less often something serves its intended purpose, the less likely it is truly needed. If you only bake a cake once a year, the cake pan has questionable utility when the price of paying someone else for a cake is negligible over the course of the year. This isn’t always true of things like tools, though, whose price can be substantial, so you have to measure the cost over the long-haul.
But this just raises more questions in my head. On the subject of tools, many can be rented, but I prefer to own mine so they are immediately available when they are needed. I don’t think their cost is substantial over the many years in which they remain available (at least not compared to how much I overspend on things like groceries and books), but it does make me wonder…if I had bought my car, spent a few thousand dollars on parts, and rented all the requisite tools, I could have replaced the front suspension over a weekend and really never worried about it again; moreover, I would have been able to return the tools for full refund, and not even needed most of them until another 10 years passed, considering OEM parts (generally) last so long. Not only would I be highly unlikely to need to get under the car for a very long time, but I also wouldn’t need space to store all of those tools. It’s…an interesting thought.
Of course, this situation doesn’t apply to things like bread machines, since we can’t eat 10 years worth of food at once, saving us the expense for that period of time, ha! But this just adds a whole new dimension to analyzing how best to spend money. I’ll have to stew over this for awhile, I think.
[I occasionally enjoy being clinical like this, but it has yet to be seen whether there exists any cohesive theory of spending in general. I do believe that “bad spending” exists, objectively, but it’s never immediately clear exactly what “good spending” means, despite your mom rolling her eyes at you “wasting” your allowance on Pokemon cards when you were a kid. I think it’s just a reminder to not judge people too harshly on whether their intention to be good with money has the “optimal” effect, because it’s largely unclear what “optimal” even is, notwithstanding the great variety of possessions and their nuance]