Living the Harbor Freight lifestyle in Amsterdam

I hate harbor freight.

For those of you unfamiliar, Harbor Freight is one of the largest tool sellers in existence with every imaginable tool you can think of all under one roof. A tool that normally costs 10x will sell for 2-5x at Harbor Freight. The problem is it’s all cheap crap that barely survives a single job’s use.

I know the logic - if you only need a tool once, then get it at Harbor Freight. The trouble is, if I need a tool once, I ALWAYS need it a second time. I have an enormous garage with nearly every tool known to man… and all of them have been used more than once.

Now we’re in Amsterdam, and I find myself living a Harbor Freight lifestyle. As we are only here for a year, our buying patterns have completely shifted. Where normally we research an item to purchase looking for quality, durability and effectiveness in use, we now look for items that will last one year, and then can either be thrown out or given away (Ikea furniture, “Egyptian-like” cotton sheets, 2020 vintage tv, etc…). In the event neither of those two options work, then we look for something used that can be resold easily when we leave (elliptical and treadmill).

As hard as it is to believe, this is one of the more difficult parts of our living in Amsterdam for a year. Just about everything in our daily lives is performed with barely functional, sub-standard tools. Cooking might be the worst of all. Remember the cooking set you bought in college … 1 flimsy frying pan, a soup pot, and a couple pots barely capable of boiling water??? Yeah. Nearly 40 years out of college, I have a modern set of these. Remember the knives that stay sharp for one use before needing resharpening? We have those also. Whatever you use in the kitchen (mixing bowls, spatulas, tongs, cutting boards, etc) … think back to what you had in your first apartment… that’s what we have. What this means is that cooking anything is far more work for a lesser resulting outcome. And this is mostly true for everything in our day to day lives.

Could be worse… at least we brought our own car! Driving the ‘Harbor Freight’ car would have been unbearable for a car guy. It’s ironic that we only use the car once a week on average.

The one good thing about this whining experience is that it’s helped us rethink our purchasing habits in general. There are certain items in our lives that we don’t need the best. A good example is our Ikea couch we bought when we arrived. It’s not the nicest couch. It’s not leather and will stain easily. This is perfect for the beach! We can buy a new couch every 3-4 years, and still come out ahead of buying another a very nice couch that will be destroyed by sand, sun, food, etc.

Another good thing… this has provided a strong appreciation for what we have waiting for us at ‘home1.0’ when we return.