Well, it turns out that reusable grocery totes may be reusable, but they are not altogether non-disposable. I found a three-inch rent in the bottom of one today; since I use these bags to carry my stuff down to the apartment pool, including my mobile and my keys, one can quite easily imagine I could have lost my keys or my phone through that hole. The things I take to the pool are not that heavy, so I can only assume it was some heavy groceries that caused the bag to tear.
Why on earth does every. damn. thing. they come up with start out great and then slide into a condition that is not quite adequate? I remember when people first started using the bags, sometime around 1990. You might call that era the Golden Age Of Reusable Shopping Bags. I fondly remember the ones I had at the time. They were spacious and sturdy. They had not only the usual handles, but SHOULDER STRAPS. I could easily walk several blocks, or even a mile, carrying ten or twenty pounds of groceries home. The shoulder straps were too convenient, so naturally they had to go. So these days, the bags have only handles. And if you try to carry more than one or two things in them, they bump continually and aggravatingly against your legs with every step. Not to mention your arms getting tired from having to grip the handles. They’re really not meant to be carried walking, but to be loaded in the car and driven home.
The disposable plastic bags from the market also aren’t as good as they used to be, but that’s probably a good thing.
THEY (you know the people I’m talking about) come up with a great idea, they make a great product, and people buy it. Then THEY decide that maybe they can make things a little cheaper, and cut a corner or two. Sometimes this is accompanied by a retail price drop, but more often the retail price stays the same or rises. Soon afterwards, what was once a Really Nifty Thing is now more like a Really Shitty Thing.
THEY are trying to find the lowest possible acceptable product quality, and it doesn’t matter which product it is.
I bought some treats for folks at work and I figured I’d splurge and have one of the cookies I bought. I got the Pepperidge Farms chunk cookies. These things used to be huge, with huge square chunks of chocolates and nuts. One cookie could feed a family of five. The thing I pulled out of the bag looked like some weakass generic version of their cookies. It was small, anemic and emaciated. Chunk, my ass! Yes, I realize that we as a nation have become a bit chunky in the ass possibly due to too many big ass cookies but I have been good and wanted to reward myself with one big cookie! Pepperidge Farms doesn’t remember … they lie!
Oddly enough, that’s pretty much it. It’s all about maximizing profitability by reducing costs as much as possible (including decreasing quality) while selling at as high a price as possible.
I was just mentioning this to someone. There seems to be a natural law that every time you find a product you like, and go to buy another one, it’s either been discontinued or there’s a new inferior version.
I have a lot of difficulty finding shoes that fit me. A few years ago I found a great pair of New Balance hiking shoes. It’s like they were specifically designed for my feet. Sure enough, I went to buy another pair, and there is a “new version” . . . which turned out to be the shittiest shoes I’ve ever worn. For a while you could still get some of the original ones online . . . but only in some truly bizarre sizes.
I have a buddy who makes custom gear for cavers and rescue workers, he also makes totes. If you are interested I can scrounge a link for his page - just PM me.
Here’s my favorite place to get reusable gear and here are the bags I have. They’re substantial, well-made, and have long handles. I hate the ones the grocery stores sell that are made out of recycled plastic. They’re flimsy and you can’t throw them in the washing machine. If I’m going to use a grocery bag for years, I need to be able to clean it easily.
I think they are still fine, so at the drugstore I reuse mine and get a nickel back for each one reused. I once bought the cloth and they got filthy in one trip in the trunk. Wash them and they shrink and the seams dissolve.
Now I bring a couple of boxes with me in the trunk, shift them to a cart in the parking lot, shop and have the clerk put things back into the boxes. No bags. And then bring the boxes directly inside in fewer trips than with bags.
In my business I use kraft paper. I buy it in rolls, usually 36" wide. I’ve been doing the same sort of work (framing pictures) for over 25 years. Most vendors of kraft paper (at least that supply our industry) offer either 40# or 50#. Early in my career we used 50# as the dust cover on the back of frames. It was heavy, and similar in thickness to the grocery bags at the local Shopwell grocery store. The 40# was noticably thinner. We used that to cover work surfaces and wrap finished goods.
Now, all these years later, I use an acid and lignin free paper manufactured for no other purpose for dust covers and order 50# for covering tables and wrapping stuff.
Except there is no way on earth I will ever believe that the 50# paper I bought in 2009 is even as thick as the 40# paper I bought in 1989. It’s like brown tissue paper. It’s infuriating.
I understand cost cutting. Truly I do. If someone said “We can still get you 50# paper the way you remember it, but it’ll cost $130 a roll” I’d never buy it. What I don’t understand is how they are allowed to call it the same. Aren’t the weights of paper standardized?
OP mentions reusable grocery totes. I’ve one from Europe, it is made of Dacron netting, probably weights one tenth of those sold a WalMart and will probably last 10 times longer.
As a rule of thumb I think the manufacture of good things could put the himself out of business because no one would ever need to buy another e.g. I’ve garden tools my grandmother that were 50 years old when my grandmother gave them to in 1950. I’ve a parka that is USAF issue from about 1960. I drive a 1988 Chevrolet truck. None of these manufacturers could long survive making stuff of this quality.
On the bags I think they tried to cheap their way through by trying to make a handle big enough to be a strap too. But it isn’t very effective. It hangs too high and feels too tight, in addition to being too long now for a handle. I swear I am not a chimpanzee, but some of the bags I have scrape the ground when I carry them by the handles.
Spouse had a 25 year old tea kettle, that worked fine, but weighed a ton because he never cleaned the scale out of it (must have been almost an inch of deposit). I wanted a new one.
The new one lasted one year, the plastic bits on the top slowly became brittle and chipped off. The second new one has a whistle like a demented cricket. I don’t expect it to last more than a year or two.
I had a Mr. Coffee machine for years and years - that thing must have been possessed, it just wouldn’t die. Well, eventually, it did succumb to old age so I got a new Mr. Coffee. The black coating on the hot plate is flaking and burning off, it smears all over white plastic and has to be washed off every time I use it. I poured vinegar through to clean it, and I swear I ran it 20 times in a row and still got teeny black flakes of…something…plastic bits?..coming out in the water. I’m still using it until I scrape up the spare cash for a new one.
Well, it looks like some things are much, much better. I did eat the lunch ‘food’ in school. Back in the 60’s and 70’s. I had a ‘meal’ plan in college in ’79. Pretty much all of it was inedible. Never complained because I thought that was the way food was supposed to be. The only difference between any of it was the color.
I didn’t know any better.
I do now. And I am the families cook (for the most part).
Visiting CU Colorado’s web site, it looks like things have improved quite a bit.
I did learn one thing from college 30 years ago… – learn to cook. Now.
Quizno’s has cut the price on some of their subs, and the quality is now awful. Management has evidently forgotten that they were successful in the first place because they had higher quality(and prices) then their competitors.
OUr first fridge lasted 25 years (and would still be going strong I bet, but the drain from the auto-defrost clogged and we got water in the fridge. So we bought a new one, also from Sears. Piece of shit. Within a year cheap plastic shelf support broke and had to be replaced (cost of the part, 50c, annoyance, $100). It used to be steel. After a few years, we replaced that fridge with another one, which came w/o an ice cube tray. Fortunately, I saved the old one.
I have plantar fasciities (oh hell, I have no idea how it’s spelled) and I used to wear a shoe that worked very well. I bought a pair every two years for about 12 years–until they discontinued it.
My recommendation for grocery bags: net some with heavy string. I did and it works well. folds completely into my wife’s handbag. The only thing I would do differently would be a thicker handle to make it easier to carry. They’re great. Net bags are what you mainly see in Europe and always have.
I could go on. All I have to do is like something and that is their excuse for discontinuing it.
Subaru Outback. Previously, a quirky small station wagon with all wheel drive. After 2010 redesign, now basically a cookie cutter “cross over” SUV that manages to be bland and hideous at the same time. Consensus amongst the Subaru forums is that they’ve forgotten what made them popular in the first place.
For the last 12 years since I bought my first Outback, I was convinced that the next car I bought would also be an Outback. Now, I don’t know what I’m going to get.