Nowadays it is insanely easy to throw out what’s broken or not working in favor of buying a low-cost replacement that arrives in forty-eight hours in a box on your doorstep. I love my Amazon Prime, but I also grew up with parents and grandparents who appreciated resourcefulness. If something didn’t work, then you tried to fix it before doing anything else; if you didn’t know how to repair it, you learned. My in-laws are the exact same way: whatever they don’t know how to do, they teach themselves to know for next time. Which, in the age of YouTube, isn’t hard since there’s a how-to video for almost anything and everything.
That mentality expands to cleaning and maintenance too. For example, my dad takes obsessive care of his vehicles, to the point where it’s a running joke in our family. He washes his car by hand, vacuums the floorboards every week, and waxes the paint to buff out any marks or scratches. He changes the oil on time and rotates the tires regularly. He’ll even park in the rear of a parking lot just so nobody will accidentally door-ding him. The result? His cars last a long time. To him, a car isn’t a thing you discard or trade out the second it breaks down or gets dirty or you’re ready for a new model. It’s something you own, and you’re responsible for caring for the things you own, especially if you want them to last longer.