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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)
(Score: 1) by DavePolaschek on Tuesday January 24 2017, @03:03PM
Go to their website and try and see what local groups have been set up and you get directed to FaceBook.
Nope.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @06:17PM
I don't like Facebook either (and do not have an account there), but there is an easy work-around -- just ask some young person to show you the page(s) you are interested in. Once you connect with a local group, you don't need FB anymore.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Tuesday January 24 2017, @07:03PM
Or make a throwaway account with a single use email account. I've heard of Luddites but this is some weird fusion of ignorance and wisdom. Lazy boomers trying to get millenials to do their dirty work!
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday January 24 2017, @07:58PM
Why a young person? From what I see, it's mainly the old farts who still use and love Facebook, so they can pass around their alt-right-wing conspiracy theories and "news" and make idiotic comments trashing LGBT people and talking about how Trump and his billionaire buddies are going to make things great. The young people abandoned FB a while ago because it's such a cesspool.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @08:32PM
GP here...sorry for confusion, I'm 62 and don't use Facebook. By "young person" I meant someone 30-40 which probably matches the FB demographic fairly well?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday January 24 2017, @09:39PM
Ah, I see.
Even so, I know a bunch of people in your age range and older who use FB, showing each other pictures of quilts or whatever and bemoaning the state of the world. But yeah, the bulk of their demographic seems to be the Xers.