Let’s be blunt

Durable products have become unicorns. They’re rare, hard to find, and often overshadowed by a market full of disposable design: glued-shut assemblies, pretty veneers over weak joints, and warranties that evaporate when you need them most. Most modern products are optimized for the shelf photo and the unboxing moment — not for the fifth year of hard use.

The results are predictable: frustration, repeat purchases, and mountains of waste. The average American now discards almost 1,000 pounds of household goods each year.

What Lasts exists to hunt for the unicorns. We dig through warranties, repair guides, and long-term owner reports to surface the few products built with care, craft, and longevity. Our scoring engine weighs durability, repairability, warranty strength, and real-world evidence — turning scattered signals into clear, traceable scores.

Every purchase is a vote: for craftsmanship, repair, sustainability, and sanity. Our aim is simple — help you buy fewer things, choose well, and keep what you own longer.

Why we exist

We believe that a life well lived deserves things well made. This isn’t only about saving money or reducing waste. It’s about living with objects that support our lives instead of cluttering them.

Studies show that people who adopt intentional, minimalist consumption habits report higher well-being and lower stress. Every cheap pan that warps and gets tossed away, every gadget built to break, erodes our sense of permanence and care.

When we fill our lives with things that last — a skillet that becomes seasoned with stories, a tool that earns a patina, a pen that can be repaired — we shift from consumption to connection. Design theorist Jonathan Chapman calls this “emotional durability”: forming relationships with the objects we keep.

Choosing things that last isn’t nostalgia. It’s a quiet form of resistance in a culture of disposability — a return to stewardship and gratitude.

Our values

• Independent. A single-owner LLC with no corporate backers. Recommendations are never for sale.
• Evidence-first. Every score is grounded in verifiable data: warranty terms, repair guides, long-term owner outcomes, and teardown analysis — not trends or marketing.
• Transparent. We show our math. You can read how we score products and why on our method page.
• Practical. Clear tradeoffs. Plain-English insights. Built for real shoppers, not hobbyist engineers.
• Collaborative. We learn from the people who use things every day. Your lived experience is part of the evidence.
• Always improving. Durability isn’t static; neither are we. We refine our tools as products evolve and the BIFL culture grows.

Where we come from

What Lasts was created by the team at Simpler Method, a collaborative studio focused on untangling messy, real-world problems. Product durability fit the pattern perfectly: information scattered across warranty fine print, repair forums, teardown videos, and user stories — with no clear signal of what truly lasts.

By combining AI-assisted research with human judgment, we turned that noise into a practical tool anyone can use. Our mission is to rebuild trust — not through marketing, but through measurable evidence.

Help shape what lasts

The Buy-It-For-Life community has always been a cultural movement: people who value repair over replacement, craft over convenience, and ownership over novelty. What Lasts is built to support — and learn from — that movement.

If you have ideas, questions, or evidence we should include, we want to hear from you:

• Send us a note
• Suggest a product
• Contribute sources or report issues directly from any product detail page.

Every contribution helps make the rankings sharper, more transparent, and more aligned with real-world experience.

Explore more

Want to see exactly how we score things? Visit our scoring method. Want to understand the cultural movement behind durability and intentional ownership? Explore the movement.