My wife still uses a Shun with the tip broken off, yep. She's a great cook, and gentle with people and animals, but really hard on "stuff."

A BIFL knife discussion is almost like a BIFL discussion on cast iron pans.

Hard to go wrong with Victorinox. Almost everyone likes them. I'd suggest the 10" butcher knife.

(All knifes are BIFL if they are maintained and not abused.)

Both brands are really good. The Toro is probably simpler to maintain. Those Briggs motors are very reliable. Most of the time, when an old Toro won't start, it's because someone was dumb about not draining the fuel, and even then, new carbs are cheap and easy.

Well, if one is handy, it's about a two hour project. Alternatively, almost every town in a wintery area has a small engine repair shop that probably has a few vintage snowblowers for sale. Place I live when I'm working (population 5000) has a couple of shops where one could buy fine vintage machines all set to go for around $300-400 U.S.

Buy vintage. Old Toros and Ariens are simple and strongly built. New carb, new drive, polish up the blades, new spark plug, probably get another 30 years out of most of them.

The fireboxes on these were fairly thin stampings. They will rot over time and quickly if ashes are left in them.

For a vacuum, shop around for a used Rainbow. They last decades and decades. We have two, both about 1970 model or so. I've had to replace the control switch (a common $10 heavy dipole) in one of them. That's it. We paid $100 for one of them, and $15 (yes $15) for the other one.

Since, as you say, all tires wear out, this boils down to a calculation between price, longevity, and performance (and this latter is subjective). Living as we do in both the NE of the US and the SE of Canada, we value and need good traction in many different circumstances.

We buy Generals for summer, and Nokians for winter.

I have no personal experience with them, but the Sub-Zero brand is very well thought of.

I am a Surveyor of several decades experience. I pretty much stick with military surplus trousers and such from places like Sportsmanguide.com for field clothing.

The work is very hard on clothing, and eventually everything gets snagged on a barbed wire fence, or sticker bushes, or worn from scrambling on rocks or down slopes, etc.

Which is to say that BIFL isn't happening here, at least not for trousers.

I do spend good...very good...money on boots, but with trousers I go cheap military surplus and consider that even those won't last forever.

I've taken a couple of courses in refrigeration, and am a certified refrigerant handler.

My opinion is that, among the "cheaper" refrigerator brands, some of the GE/Haier units, made at their plant in Kentucky, in the United States, are about the best there is at that price point.

Are they well made? Not really. But they are light years better than Maytags, Whirlpools, Amanas, and Hotpoints, which are utter shit and tend to fail entirely two days after the warranty expires. At least one gets a few years from the Kentucky-built GE units.

Few working people can afford good refrigerators any more. Keep it simple. The less "bells and whistles" (water dispensers, external ice dispensers, internet) the less there is to fail.

jh