Shopping for Scissors the Thrifty Way
January 23, 2009 by Katelyn Thomas
Filed under Around the House
You see scissors on sale for $2 and buy a pair. Two weeks later, the handle snaps. Six weeks later, you lose another pair. When you add up the cost of all those cheap scissors, you realize you spent about $10 in one year and all you have to show for it is one very flimsy pair of scissors. Suddenly, they don’t look like such a thrifty purchase after all!
I was once one of these flimsy tool buyers, too. Then, my brother walked in on me struggling to repair a dollar store pair of scissors and said, “Here, use mine. They were Pop Pop’s.” Suddenly, I was using a pair of scissors that were at least 15 years old and they worked great. I was amazed.
My brother told me in the nicest of ways that I was being penny wise and pound foolish with my cheap tool buying habits. He showed me his knives, his hammer, his shovel. All are downright ancient and all still work. The scissors are solid metal instead of having flimsy plastic handles, the knives have blades that extend completely through their metal handles and so on. When a tool stops working well, he sharpens blades, tightens screws and oils springs.
After my talk with my brother, I bought one good pair of scissors for sewing and then found another for general use. A few years later, they’re still going strong. If I didn’t have my brother to sharpen them, I would have to pay a handyman or the guy who comes to the fabric store to do the job every few years, but I do have my brother, so maintenance costs are a big zero. I will probably never have to buy another pair of scissors as long as I live.
(Look for industrial shears. You should be able to buy them for under $25 a pair. Or, if you really want to get them cheap, check estate sales. There is likely to be a pair in the sewing box.)
Photo courtesy of Amazon.com
