Disposable vs. Durable: Our Philosophy on Reviews

We have had some of our readers query why many of the products we review are on the pricier side. When you can buy a camp chair at your local four lettered supermarket for mere pounds, why do we review more expensive chairs and recliners?

Surely everyone wants a bargain, don’t they?

Well it depends on what you class as a bargain.

Do you want a chair that may be cheap in cost to you, but is also made with cheap materials that pollute the earth, that is made in factories with questionable moral working standards, by people earning a pittance, and after all that, the chair probably won’t last more than a couple of trips away.

So, is that cheap deal really a bargain when you could buy so much better?

I’m talking about those products that don’t cost the earth (literally), that are made by companies that pay their workers a fair wage, and are made so well that you’ll probably not have to buy another in your lifetime. These kind of products are, in our opinion, worth the larger initial outlay as they’ll last long after others have disintegrated.

In the past we kept our treasured things, and because they lasted, we handed them down from generation to generation. OJ Borg, Radio 2 DJ, was talking about his DIY efforts the other day, and about how when he grabbed his drill he was mocked as it was ‘so old’. There is nothing wrong about something being old, as long as it does what it needs to do, and many older products were built with lasting quality and care. Nowadays quality seems to have become an afterthought. This line from ex-Saville Row tailor and judge on The Great British Sewing Bee, Patrick Grant’s new book ‘Less’ sums it up nicely:

'The quality of the everyday items we used began to fall, slowly at first, and then more rapidly, until in recent times thousands of years of knowledge and understanding in the making of good things was completely abandoned, so that everything we buy is now cheap and disposable.'

‘Cheap and disposable’ may have seemed like a good idea to put more money back in our pockets, but in reality, the constant push to buy more stuff has led to houses crammed with things that we don’t actually use or need, ever-growing landfill sites filled with the sins of this throwaway society, and a constant pressure to keep up with your peers. Most of us actually have less money in the bank because of cheap and disposable.

This is why the products we enjoy reviewing are usually the ones we think are well made, and that will last. Sometimes we are asked to review products, and find them lacking. Most of those times the products are a cheap version of a good product, and we can’t find it in our heart to promote it, so we don’t do the review. Bad quality leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and that’s not what The Mud Life is about.

That said, occasionally there are great products that also have an affordable price tag, and when we come across those rarities we tend to hail them from the rooftops.

So I hope that explains our ethos, and why we tend to review products that may cost a few more pennies.