Years ago I bought a toaster. A $60 Kitchen Aid, bought at Target. My previous toaster had worked perfectly for 8 years, and it wasn't available anymore so I bought this one. Thought I was doing the right thing buying a good quality toaster that would hopefully last another 8 years. 13 months after I bought it, it failed. Took it to a small appliance repair place where the guy explained to me that it was built so as to not be repaired. Once it failed, it was junk. Indeed, there was no way to disassemble it at all, and no parts were available. He happily pointed out to me, a $225 toaster that was built so it could be repaired, but I didn't think spending that kind of money on a toaster made sense (I've since learned about the Sunbeam toasters that work almost forever, and can be found at garage sales for $5-10).

So I bought a $25 Toastmaster at Target and it's worked now for almost 7 years. Cool. Will replace it with the vintage Sunbeam (after I clean all the dead bugs and dust out of it from long term storage) when it breaks.

I love being able to repair stuff. I'm in IT and we repair computers all the time. Swap out parts, sometimes even solder on a new component if it means saving a few hundred bucks from having to buy a new board for the server.

This disposable society we live in is pretty sad. I feel terrible throwing so much stuff into a landfill that should be repairable.