To Chuck It or Not to Chuck It?

If Hamlet had been a bit less obsessed with his obviously dysfunctional family and a little more obsessed with junk (and who would really have blamed him for making the switch?), he probably would have tied his famous “To be or not to be” speech in better with “Something is rotten in Denmark.”  Then he really could have said something like my title, “To chuck or not to chuck, that is the question.  Whether ’tis nobler to repair the old, or to gain cheap thrills from the new…”

Really, if it is rotten, chuck it.  Or, I suppose, you could compost it, if you are lucky enough to have a yard to compost in.  But, if you have, hypothetically (like I’d make this one up), a 34 inch television set that is on the fritz–you really ought to see a repair person before you chuck it into the dumpster and I have to put my garbage on top of it while I drool.

(Okay, you got me, this situation isn’t as hypothetical as I tried to trick you into believing it was.  If I could have lifted the monstrosity out of the dumpster by myself I would have checked to see if it worked or not.  My bet is that it worked, but that the previous owner decided he/she couldn’t live without High Def.)

The deep thought (after two paragraphs of rambling, I really ought to give you something to take home) is that repairing something old is almost always less expensive than buying new–even if the people who sell new want you to think otherwise.  Are you with me?