Just read CR's latest article on appliances... the story was about *when* to repair, but what caught my attention was that the age of don't-bother-to-repair-just-replace seemed to be mostly at 4 to 6 years. Okay, I do understand that great advances have (finally) been made, and new models are more energy efficient and sometimes even better for the environment. But better for the wallet? My old refrigerator uses about $65 of electricity a year and cost about $300 --- 25+ years ago. Ditto the freezer (using about $125 yearly). New models of comparable size and freezer area each will (maybe) use about $25 electricity a year but will cost over $1,000 (going considerably down in storage area could shrink the cost to about $700 each). Those might be fair trade-ups, but not if one has to seriously face replacement in just a few years.

I think I'm going to have a talk with the old refrigerator and freezer... maybe I can convince them to keep on working for another decade or two.