The beauty of fixing an object and keeping it around in your life… is that the object becomes very sentimental. “That’s one thing that I just know from being in this business… These mixers really become part of the family, especially when they’re handed down from grandmother to mother. I’ve worked on third- and fourth-generation mixers that have been handed down from great-grandma to grandma to mom to daughter.”
– "Your stuff is actually worse now", Vox.
Thinking of oneself as a custodian of everyday items lends unexpected meaning to life: a sense of family, a sense of one’s own mortality and the preciousness of life, a sense of pride and guardianship, a sense of connection and familiarity with the object in question and its workings.
Related: "Everything Must Be Paid for Twice", Raptitude.
There’s the first price, usually paid in dollars, just to gain possession of the desired thing, whatever it is: a book, a budgeting app, a unicycle, a bundle of kale.
But then, in order to make use of the thing, you must also pay a second price. This is the effort and initiative required to gain its benefits, and it can be much higher than the first price.