Folks will spend $50,000 on a car but balk at spending more than $1,000 on a mattress. This is something I’ve never understood, because you’ll probably spend 8x more time in your bed than your car, and a good mattress will outlast almost any vehicle.*
Well the same things goes for other everyday items you seldom think twice about, like your kitchen trash can. As long as it holds a bag moderately well, it’s accomplished its purpose, right? Wrong.
The $5 bins you find at Wal-Mart have a lot in common with the $50 ones you find there and elsewhere: they are what they hold, rubbish.
Enter simplehuman, an outfit that’s not afraid to sell you a $200 trash can. SimpleHuman’s cans run the gamut of sizes and shapes, and for the real geek they offer a motion activated model ($200) that opens the lid when it senses nearby movement. Alas, you can’t get that feature in their largest 13-gallon can ($195.99).
Simplehuman backs their products with a 5 or 10 year warranty, depending on model, and craft their wares out of stainless steel (which has tripled in cost in recent years) with a special coating that makes it impervious to fingerprints and easy to sponge down.
* The author owns a month-old 13-gallon simplehuman trash can, drives a five-year old $25,000 car, and sleeps on a “$1,000″ mattress he bought “new, open box” off eBay for $300 six years ago.
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