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On a drizzly Saturday morning in May, the basement of the New Paltz United Methodist Church filled with old lamps, blunt knives, malfunctioning sound mixers, and balky zippers.
About a dozen volunteers welcomed the broken goods and their owners to a worldwide movement that’s evangelizing new relationships between people and their things.
Repair Cafés—free events where volunteers with technical know-how help neighbors fix myriad household items—are part of a new brand of anti-consumerism that’s trying to offer an alternative to the mass-produced disposable goods that have dominated the global economy for the last half-century. Helping fuel that move to repairing, not buying, are U.S. consumer prices, which climbed sharply again last month as the war with Iran delivered higher gasoline prices and more pain for Americans.
After starting in the Netherlands with a single event in 2009, Repair Café has grown into a global nonprofit with more than 59,000 members, some 4,000 cafés, and close to 850,000 items fixed a year.
“We need to change our mindset. We need to change the economy,” Repair Café founder Martine Postma said. “Even if Repair Cafés can’t solve the problem alone, then still they are a very clear sign that change is needed on a much higher level.”
In New Paltz, a Hudson Valley college town about two hours from New York, 50 people brought about 85 items to the Repair Café: an antique fan that required rewiring, shirts, pants, jackets, stuffed animals. There were old family photos that needed restoring and jewelry awaiting work, like restringing beads or replacing clasps.
Repair experts waited behind long cafeteria tables to teach alternatives, giving people chances to learn that flawed goods aren’t automatically junk. “Maybe their initial reason for coming is monetary or sentimental,” organizer Holly Shader said. More than that, she added, “it gives people a chance to work together and extend the life of something. People form relationships.”
The experts on hand fixed 71 of the items, found that four needed more work, and deemed 10 beyond repair. They said they volunteer for the low-pressure joy of fixing things, with networking as a side benefit.
This article was provided by The Associated Press.