S/O Purchasing/Consumer Habits

At our house we were discussing the American habit of making purchases based not on how people will most frequently use a product, but instead on the "biggest" way in which they will use something.



So for example:

We might refit our kitchen, and decide we need 2 built-in ovens and third one in the free-standing range, because once a year we host a major bake-a-thon with friends. Instead of altering how we handle that one day's activity, we instead alter the room for all 365 days of the year.



Or instead of buying a 4 seat vehicle for our family of 3, leaving space for one extra passenger, we tend to think "Oh, we might want to do this or that someday and then we'd need space for 5 or 6 people.", and so then we buy a 6 seat vehicle. And if we own that vehicle for 5 years, maybe we put more than 4 people in a handful of times, but we incur all of the extra costs of a larger vehicle the entire time we own it. When we could have just rented a larger vehicle those handful of times.


Or we buy a house with far more space/rooms than we need at present with ideas of some future use, rather than buying a house that just fits what we need then or absolutely know we will need soon (There's a baby on the way, or you know that your job is about to switch to work-from-home, or a parent is moving in with you.).  And while many people do stay in those homes for decades and eventualy make use of all of the rooms, there are others who either move before they ever need those extra rooms, or they stay, but find they never do use all of the space.


And it's not only big items. DH fell into this trap once he bought a tent---you can fit something like 6 people in that tent, and it has a million extra flaps and pockets and awnings, and adults can stand up in it, and it holds up to all sorts of weather, and in the past 16 years we've owned it, it's never had more than 3 people in it, and we've only used in the backyard. So we've been storing this over-sized, overly complicated tent for nearly 2 decades now, and all we needed was a simple little 3-4 person tent.  


Even in micro-purchases, this happens. Every year, my kids' school teachers ask them to buy 3 and 5 subject notebooks for classes. So we buy the bigger, heavier, more expensive notebooks, and my kids fill their backpacks to nearly bursting with them, and they cram them into crowded cubbies & lockers, and then when June rolls around, they hand me a stack of half filled notebooks, and I roll my eyes.  And every year, I suggest just buying all 1 subject notebooks, and if they see they are about to fill it, we'll buy another. But no, because of course they want to buy what the teacher told them to buy. And I can't really blame them for that.

(We are now seeing more and more teachers asking for binders to be used for just one class, too. And again, they ask for 2" binder and 3" binders, instead of a 1/2" or a 1".  And the kids don't come anywhere near filling them.  It's so silly. I'm thinking my kid will soon need a suitcase to lug all of this to school!)