We were tired of things that fall apart.
The second kettle in two years. The chair that wobbled by spring. The bag whose strap gave out on the first proper trip. Somewhere along the way, buying things became a gamble you expected to lose, and most of us quietly accepted it.
So we started asking a different question of everything we looked at. Is it built to do the job it is sold for? Can the maker show us how, and out of what? Would we keep it in our own house after the novelty wore off? Most things did not survive those three questions, and the ones that did became the shelf.
If it would not survive our own house, it does not go on the shelf.
