The Repair Café is an international organization originating in the Netherlands dedicated to promoting sustainability by teaching people how to repair damaged belongings, rather than discarding them for brand new ones. With a chapter of the organization in Morehead, members present repaired all manners of items. This ranged from sewing buttons onto clothing to screwing a Roomba back together.
CJ Forrest, Head of Technical Services for the Rowan County Public Library, is also a member of the Repair Café project and one of the people who wanted to bring it to Morehead. She said the Repair Café’s mission lines up with the values of a community such as Morehead.
“There’s a lot of people who tend to do things themselves. They learn how to take care of their neighbors. So, those kind of values just fit in line pretty well with the Repair Café. It’s Morehead and all that - so it just seemed natural to have one of those here,” Forrest said.
Forrest said the repairs are not restricted to any type of category, with all the members present at the meeting offering their own special services. Forrest herself learned how to repair cast iron cookware and remove rust from them using an electrolysis bath. Sheila Hamilton, another member who specializes in sewing and repairing sewing machines, said she supports the sustainability the program promotes.
“To try to figure out how to fix things on their own instead of just tossing them. Like the one lady who brought a pair of pants, the button fell off and she didn’t know how to repair it. But she didn’t want to fool with sending them back, so she brought them here to get them fixed, to show her how to fix them. And I sewed the button on and showed her how to do it,” Hamilton said.
Martin White, who specializes in repairing laptops, computers, and other electronic devices, said he found a tablet with a cracked screen in a dumpster before the meeting. Despite its damaged state and how dirty it was, the tablet was still operational. He soon discovered a security issue that discarding the tablet had created.
“So, I cleaned it off, plugged it in, turned it on and it booted up and actually went into the previous user’s account. So, security is another thing I would like people to be more aware of,” White said.
Morgan Mullins, the Communications Manager for the Rowan County Public Library, said that even as an organizer of the project, he had been learning techniques for repairing various things just from observing and talking to people at the meeting.
“Because the people that we have had to come in are community experts. Some of them know each other, some of them don’t, and they’ve already had conversations that have allowed them to learn something from one another or to build partnerships that are going to go out of this building with them, we hope. And then when we see them back in for the next one, it’ll be that much stronger,” Mullins said.
Mullins said he hopes the meeting will demonstrate to visitors that repairing something is often not as difficult as one may initially think. He said the day at the Repair Café proved that to him.
“A lot of folks, me included, think that fixing something is too complicated, too expensive, too hard. And that’s why we just give up and we buy a new one of whatever it is. And we’re trying to fight that culture a little bit by showing people it’s actually a lot easier than you think it is,” Mullins said.
CJ Forrest said the Repair Café will meet again and perhaps more frequently, depending on public feedback.
“We’re planning to have another one in the fall, after our summer reading. I’m just hoping that over time this will grow and we’ll have regular, possibly even quarterly or monthly Repair Cafés where people can come in and have things fixed,” Forrest said.
When once again the sound of skilled hands working to preserve the objects of our everyday lives will be heard again. More information about the Repair Café and other upcoming meetings can be found on the Rowan County Public Library’s website.