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posted by martyb on Tuesday January 24 2017, @12:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the making-broken-vacuum-cleaners-suck-again dept.

If you've ever despaired of getting your vacuum cleaner fixed or thought that your broken lamp was a lost cause, there's hope. A worldwide movement is trying to reform our throwaway approach to possessions.

The movement's foundation is the Repair Cafe, a local meeting place that brings together people with broken items and repair coaches, or volunteers, with the expertise to fix them.

[...] "One of the things that makes it challenging and interesting is that we don't know what people are going to bring," Ray Pfau, an organizer of a Repair Cafe in Bolton, Mass., said in an email.

Lamps top the list of items brought in to be repaired, followed by vacuum cleaners, Mr. Wackman said. The types of repairs offered vary by location and reflect the particular talent in a community, he said.

New Paltz [in upstate New York] has a repair person with a national reputation as a doll expert. It also has a "Listening Corner" with a psychiatric nurse "because being listened to is a 'reparative act,' " he said.

The cafes invite people to bring their "beloved but broken" possessions to the gatherings, which are hosted in church basements, libraries, town halls and senior centers. The cafes make no guarantees that items will be fixed.

"All we can guarantee is that you will have an interesting time," Mr. Wackman said.

The gatherings tend to draw professionals, retirees and hobbyists who volunteer as repair coaches.

None in my area but I would be tempted to show up and help. I like to fix things and have a decent success rate, just coaxed some more life out of our ~30 year old garage door opener.

Similar article at: http://www.digitaltrends.com/home/repair-cafe/ and the main website is at: https://repaircafe.org/en/about/ (also available for NL, FR, DE & ES)


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Unixnut on Tuesday January 24 2017, @02:18PM

    by Unixnut (5779) on Tuesday January 24 2017, @02:18PM (#458090)

    > Who is buying these complicated lamps? Most of the ones in the stores are still the plain ol' hardwired type with no electronics.

    People with more money then sense. Same as it always was.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @03:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @03:13PM (#458108)

    Indeed. I only have simple lamps. The most complicated one I have is on a dimmer switch and the dimmer switch is really just based upon resistance.

    The complicated and expensive bit of my lighting set up is that I'm using Phillips Hue to handle that. Not user fixable, but they should last long enough that it doesn't much matter.