Whenever I buy clothes they always end up getting holes quickly, I burn through socks fast, my bags keep breaking, my phones magically shit themselves and my chargers melt. I'm sick of everything being a wear part and I'm wondering where people get things that last.
I obsessively research things or intentionally buy cheap anticipating breakage.
I'll list what I do for the things you mention but obviously it's just my experience:
Clothes:
Thrift high quality clothes. Have to literally feel the fabric and judge the stitching and slowly learn brands that often have decent quality for your style. You can also look for cheap mid-quality clothes and they'll still be way better than the usual H&M or Target stuff. It will depend on where you live.
Roll the dice on AliExpress. Sometimes the stuff is great and has reinforced stitching (certain sock brands, for example). Sometimes it's paper thin garbage. Read the reviews and look for items with many reviews. Also consider finding one of the groups that uses private links to buy branded dupes. I haven't done that in a long time but it seems to be something you can still do.
Bags:
It really depends on the kind of bag I guess. But here are some ideas:
Brands with really good warranties will either have good stuff or will give you a new item if their stuff breaks down fast. Patagonia, for example (they also sell to the US military...). Timbuk2 is also decent. You can also judge the quality here by the material, Denier rating, and stitching.
AliExpress "tactical" backpacks are pretty decent. The ones with lots of reviews. As a bonus they're great for on-the-ground actions because they blend in.
Fjallraven sometimes has good stuff. Most items that use Cordura (any brand) will hold up pretty well.
You can also thrift bags. I have found fantastic backpacks, $300 backpacks, for $30 at thrift stores.
Phones:
I've had good luck with phones. I shoot for well-reviewed phones in the $300-$400 range. There's also that guy that beats up phones to review their sturdiness. It can help you decide on which ones to avoid. OnePlus phones are usually a pretty good bet. If you want to run alternative ROMs there's a big incentive to get a Pixel of some kind.
Chargers: I just buy Anker exclusively. No problems like melting yet.
Many categories of manufactured goods are becoming higher quality and cheaper due to Chinese productive capacity. See if there are just-as-good Chinese niche products in a given category. The nice ones will often be more expensive than the cheapest Chinese items but still 1/5-1/3 as expensive as the Western name brans stuff they are competing with. For example, there are many backpacks by lesser known Chinese brands that are reportedly very high quality and are that much cheaper. They're very popular in East Asia and you can often find them on AliExpress if you search carefully.
I'm gonna dispute the rec on pixels. I had to give up on them (and therefore the Roms that only support them :( ). I think they might have gotten worse over the years. I had a 3a for a long time but after I had to replace that I couldn't find anything stable.
When they break the parts are $$$$ to replace. Guy at the phone repair place told me its cause they are niche so not a lot of 3rd party manufacturer. Can only buy from google. When my screen broke it would have cost more to fix than the whole thing costed to buy on eBay.
Better to buy a more popular device, can get parts more likely.
Yeah it really depends on how much you want those ROMs. I've had good luck with 2 Pixels but I 100% believe you that it's probably cheaper to buy another one than to fix one most of the time.
I haven't really found a phone that is popular and recent and friendly enough to ROMs, unfortunately. I also used to get Samsungs but they've made it difficult to install ROMs for many years now. I kind of just try to make a phone last 3-5 years and accept that it's gonna break some time around then.
ha we are on the same trajectory. Used to have samsungs for about a decade, I bought the same model (A5?) twice in a row because I lost the first one and it was doing fine for me with whatever ROM I was using at that time.
The thing with pixels is that some ROMs (like CalyxOS, which is really good) only work on them because of technical reasons I don't understand. So the shitty support is extremely frustrating.
Last year I had to replace my last functional pixel it was so much BS trying to find one that actually had an unlocked bootloader, then screens broke immediately (2 phones in a row broke on the first bump after having them less than 1 week vs the 3a which I literally dropped hundreds of times) and prohibitive to repair. Oh and because they are not very popular, there aren't as many cases available for them as for other models. I ended up settling on a phone that doesn't work properly because I just got tired and everyone was annoyed at me for being unreachable.
I can second fjallraven backpacks, mines still going strong after a decade. Recently found it's because they're made with best Korea's national fabric, vinylon.
Thanks for the recs. Time to go thrifting and try Ali