I have no cite for this but it seems to me that beet sugar (most cheap sugar) is not as well suited to baking and candy-making. I will get the cheapest brand of cane sugar, though.
SS, I should learn not to read your posts after just having taken a sip of liquid.:o
I prefer the behavior of cane sugar as well. I wonder if this has something to do with sugar beets being mostly GMO Roundup-resistant now or if it’s just that I’ve become more aware/fussier about how things cook.
Windshield washer fluid should cost about $1.59/gal. Watch the temperature rating, thought. I’ve made the mistake of leaving the summer stuff in too long and it is a real pain to have to wait for a warm day in late November to finally get it all pumped out.
When shopping for vodka, it is a handle (1.75liter) of Smirnoff in the cart for about $18. The premium brands are a scam and a ripoff. However, I have found that there are some non-mass-market types that are sub-Smirnoff. Around here, there is a large Polish and Russian immigrant population and some vodkas marketed to these folks are just dreadful and not really much cheaper.
My preferred olive oil is about $20/3liter can.
I’ve been really impressed with inexpensive flashlights from DealExtreme, this type of thing.
When pricing light bulbs, color, power and price are the metrics. This was true for incandescent as well as CFL.
I am 100% sold on nuts from Aldi.
In the laundry room, I’m OK with cheapie detergent and dryer sheets. I get the good stuff for dark loads, though.
No one will be able to convince me that there’s a better hand cleaner than Boraxo. Here’s a decade’s supply for $14. It’s a cereal box sized package and you use about a teaspoon at a time.
[quote="Siam Sam’]
I much prefer plain old French’s yellow mustard to any of that fancy Grey Poupon and such.
[/quote]
Whoa, there, Richie Rich. Get yourself over to the dollar store and exchange a hundred pennies for 20oz of Koops or whatever. However, this only applies to yellow mustard.
I have some pricier preferences for other types: brown, deli, dijon, stone ground, etc.
Though parachutes, condoms, mountain climbing equipment, syringes and hookers all might conceivably fall into the one-use disposable category, I would have to say no for all of them.
I’m pretty sure you can use most mountain climbing equipment more than once.
Hence the inclusion of “might conceivably.”
(I’m pretty sure you can use all the other items on the list more than once as well, but…)
I’d happily buy the cheapest syringes available. So long as they have FDA approval, they’re going to be good enough for me.
Now, condoms, I might move back into the “middle” range of costs. Not the cheapest, but certainly not the “premier” costs either. (And, again, I’d look for FDA approval.)
Some mountain-climbing equipment, I’d go for the cheapest. The basic ropes/lines.
But…once more, this goes to my question earlier: absolute cheapest, or cheapest from a reputable store? I insist on a minimum of quality – UL approved, FDA approved, etc. That automatically rules out the absolute cheapest of products – the kind some grinning gap-toothed stranger weeth an outrageous accent swears was used only once by the Archduke Leopold (God rest his memory) when he fell off the Druesberg.
The cheapest hookers? No way. One would want them to have enough income at least for decent medical care. Not that I used their services, but I used to work near Logan Circle in DC which was the heart of the street walker district, and most of those woman looked … very unhealthy.
Nowadays, sewing your own clothing is more expensive than buying it ready-made, unless you’re wanting something custom-made or can get your fabric and notions cheap (i.e. thrift store or garage sale) or free.
As for the price of a cordless drill, wouldn’t it cost less than, say, $20 to rent one?
I have to qualify this one. I can get some cheap “Personna” razors which seem to me to be just as good as Gillettes. However, most house brand razors, DG, Assured, etc…will shred your face up pretty viciously.
For me about the only time is when the cheapest just happens to be a brand or product I know and trust and would use anyway. Or when its so highly recommended by people I trust that I just have to give it a shot.
I certainly won’t dispute this, as I have no idea how the economics would work, but can you quickly summarize how this can be? It seems counterintuitive.
(Is it based on a comparison of what my time is worth, as compared to sweat-shop labor rates in whatever far-away lands where Sears has their shirts made? If so, and if I leave that part of the calculation out – let’s say I do my sewing while watching TV, so it’s already time I’ve budgeted as “non-income” hours – would the reasoning still apply, i.e., the yardage and buttons and things would still add up to more than what the shirt costs at K-Mart?)
(As you went on to note, there is the value – and joy – of purely customized stuff, like having the pockets exactly where I want them, etc.)
I can’t really think of any product where someone couldn’t produce an abysmally poor quality version, so the answer to your question might be cheapest from a reputable source. Perhaps for some goods that are not produced–stocks, for example–purchasing the absolute cheapest from any source would be acceptable.
A major manufacturer of clothing can obtain raw cloth at substantially lower prices than can you, and the cost of labor, overhead and everything else are still lower than the savings from economies of scale obtained on the materials. A similar thing happens with some cheap wood furniture–where it’s cheaper to buy it at Ikea than to make it yourself.
Basically you end up paying a retail markup on every component, which works out to more than just paying a single markup on a completed item.
For example, I can buy a lined ponte pencil skirt on sale for $20.00. A yard of ponte is $6.50, and I’ll need a couple yards, so that’s $13.00. Fabric for the lining is $4.00 a yard. A pattern from McCalls is $7.50. A zipper is a couple bucks, and you’ll also need a hook and eye and thread.
And at the end of that, if I am a good seamstress, I’ll get something that even still won’t look as good or be as durable as the store-bought one. But there is also the reality that every X seeing projects fails, and that out to be factored in.
Another thing I want to bring up – solely to dismiss it immediately! – is stolen goods! Drop in on Mortimer the Fence, and you can get a nice electric drill that fell off the back of a truck…
On the other hand, legitimate pawn shops can produce some amazing bargains… (Or…are they? Am I deceiving myself if I buy pawn-shop goods? Am I, once more, in a fool’s paradise?)
Gomez Addams: “I am that fool!”
Coolness! Thank’ee. I wouldn’t have thought it, but it makes sense once you explain it.
(I don’t actually do home sewing…but I do have a hobby of home book-binding, and I know I’m losing money. But hobbies are like that!)
Yes but, they have a different tolerance of bug parts per million. 
Maybe… but the last rice that I had to return due to a bug infestation was a national brand - Mahatma, I think. (And the nice girl at the grocer’s customer service counter was far more icked out that I was. It happens. I was just glad I spotted the critters while the bag was still sealed, so that I didn’t have to fight an infestation in my pantry!)
Weevils is good for you, they took them to the moon…or was that something else…
Oh wait, it was that Ovaltine shit . :o