Most regret comes from a use that never arrived

Things bought for a possible occasion tend to outlive the occasion.

Look at what is gathering dust in any household and a pattern shows up quickly. Very little of it was bad. Most of it was fine, and was bought for a use that simply never arrived: the guests who did not visit, the trip that changed, the project that stayed at the enthusiastic stage. The mistake was not the object. It was buying against a hypothetical frequency, and hypothetical frequency is nearly always optimistic, because when we imagine using something we imagine the good version of the day. The tired version, the busy version and the week where nothing goes to plan are all absent from that picture, and between them they make up most of the year.

So estimate the frequency out loud, then halve it, and ask whether the purchase still makes sense at the lower number. If it does, buy with confidence. If it only works at the optimistic figure, look at the alternatives that scale with real use: borrowing, hiring, sharing with neighbours or family, or paying somebody who already owns the equipment to do the occasional job. Owning is the right answer for frequent needs. For rare ones it is often the most expensive way to solve a problem you have twice a year. The object sits there the rest of the time, costing space and a small amount of guilt.

There is a second kind of never-arrived use worth naming, which is capability you buy in case. The extra capacity, the higher rating, the model that handles the situation you might one day face. Sometimes that headroom is genuinely worth it. Often it is bought to avoid the discomfort of deciding, and it quietly costs more to run, takes more space, and is harder to replace. If you cannot describe the day the extra capability gets used, you are probably buying reassurance rather than function. Reassurance is a legitimate thing to want, but it is worth recognising for what it is rather than dressing it as a technical requirement.