SoylentNews

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.
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“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 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.