BuyMindfully

BuyMindfully is an app designed to help you find and track durable, high-quality products, helping you make better purchase decisions.

It's simple: register the products you own and want to track (e.g., your smartphone, your new boots). Report how often you use them and how satisfied you are. You can update your usage and satisfaction anytime. BuyMindfully calculates the average satisfaction over time and the cost per usage of each product. Additionally, the app aggregates this data across all users who own the same product, providing a community-driven average of cost per usage and satisfaction. This helps you compare different brands and products to make mindful decisions when buying new items. You can learn more about the ideas behind it here and here.

In the long run, BuyMindfully helps you save money by guiding you to buy products that last longer. It also benefits the environment by encouraging the purchase of durable and sustainable items.

Your email is only used for login and password changes. We don’t share or sell your email or any data you generate in the tool to third parties. Your product reports contribute to overall averages but remain anonymous. As of today, no users apart from me can see what you own. If this ever becomes an option, it will be private by default.

The app is free to use, and there are no plans to charge a usage fee. We use Amazon Affiliate Links to help cover server costs.

You can track any products you own, from electronics and kitchenware to clothing and tools. If it’s something you use and want to evaluate, you can add it.

You will register the average usage when you first register a product. Later, you can update the usage pattern if it changes. For example, if you start using an item more or less frequently, you can report a new state and insert the average usage for that period.

Determining average usage can vary depending on the type of product:

• Kitchen appliances: This is usually straightforward. For example, if you use your dishwasher two or three times a week, you can enter that frequency into the system.
• Smartphones: For items like smartphones, usage can be more frequent and varied. You might consider how many times you interact with your phone daily. For example, I log my smartphone usage as 10 interactions per day.
• Chairs: For items like chairs, monitors, and other things you might use constantly throughout the day, I recommend you log them as 1 usage per day.

I am still evaluating other methods for tracking usage that might better suit different types of products. For example, running shoes could be better tracked by "kilometers ran". If you have ideas and suggestions, feel free to contact me at buymindfully@gmail.com.

If you have any questions or need assistance, feel free to email me at buymindfullly@gmail.com.