N. Raghuraman's column: Why are your kitchen appliances going out of fashion so quickly?

If you go to my friend Anjan Mukherjee in Mumbai for a Sunday brunch, he will make sure you sit on his terrace and sip a glass of beer or hot soup depending on the season. This is their old habit. I've known him for the past 30 years and his oldest habit at that brunch is that he pulls out beer bottles from a 1990s Godrej red 165-litre fridge. His oven for heating food also dates back to the last century. Most of the things placed on their ceiling and the stairs leading up to the terrace are older than their age, yet they serve them faithfully. They may not be gleaming. But they are doing their job well. I always wonder why my home appliances and yours are deteriorating quickly? Don't say we don't have a place like Anjan to keep old equipment. This is not true. That's because we haven't stopped comparing modern appliances to a 30-year-old fridge or a 25-year-old oven on the roof of Anjan. And call it psychological obsolescence! People who study psychological obsolescence and work on the design of many gadgets say that people also turn to working machines because they want products with new and trendy tags or the most fashionable tags among friends. People don't just change goods when it's broken or damaged. They also tend to replace old stuff because the new stuff looks more attractive, is more high-tech, or simply matches the color of their walls. Designers know this weakness and so they constantly keep making stuff in new looks. It is a simple marketing strategy to promote the replacement of products and increase sales. I spoke to several technicians whose numbers have been recorded in my mobile phone for so many years due to the repair of my home appliances, and they gave me a surprising answer. The city still has baby boomers (people born between 1946 and 1964) who are being offered repair services and who still have tools from the last century. Narendra, who represents a Korean company, says, "I am improving my engineering skills when I open their kitchen appliances and this is one of the most important reasons to repair old appliances." He also said that modern equipment is not designed to last long. This is why many products also have a warranty and extended warranty not more than 4 years. Over the years, many easy-to-find parts to fix equipment have been replaced with digital, which are proprietary versions and cannot be repaired. This is also one of the reasons why repairs have become expensive. The average life of some products has increased, while in some it has decreased significantly. If you want your home appliances to last their average life, try these tricks: 1. Appliances also have features that one rarely uses or doesn't even understand. So why do you buy them in the first place? Think twice before buying a newly released model. 2. Invest in extended warranties and regular maintenance, just like you do your car maintenance every three months. 3. If there are any minor flaws, learn to live with them. Otherwise, try to repair it yourself or take help from your children studying engineering. It will be a training for them even in the worst of circumstances. The funda is that the reason for the products not lasting for many years is due to our psychological obsolescence and the greed to make more profits by changing the design of the manufacturer. Decide for yourself if you want to keep upgrading appliances or save your hard-earned money by continuing to use old equipment?