Stuff either upgrades, maintains or degrades its state.
If you neglect your things, they will degrade. If you maintain them on schedule, they will stay maintained. And when you replace parts or make things better it will be upgraded.
The first thing is simple, you have to do nothing. Your stuff won’t last long and you will be forced to either by new or upgrade prematurely. Maintaining costs time and space. Space because you need tools to maintain stuff. A bicycle does not take much space, but if you want to replace a part you need the following:
- Space to work on the bicycle
- Specific tools for the bicycle
- Specific parts for the bicycle
Each of those takes extra space you need to get the job done. All those tools and parts require storage and maybe even maintenance in itself. Even the storage might require maintenance, you can’t let your wooden shed rot away in your garden.
Maintenance is a hidden cost many people don’t think about. I bought a cheap first motorcycle, it survived longer then I expected. I took careful notes of all expenses: services, items to replace, fuel. Turns out in the year that I own it, I spend as much on maintenance as I did on fuel.
Now you might think, “I can let others do the maintenance for me. Others can take care of the space, the tools and the time needed to maintain your things. However this costs money and most people acquire their income through their job, which also requires maintenance to maintain.
