When I was young most towns, villages, suburbs and such had "the repair guy"; a little shop with gaskets and parts for most household appliances and gadgets, vacuum tubes and a tube checker, refurbished small appliances for sale, and a Mr. Fixit type guy. When soemthing broke you took it to him to have it fixed unless you could fix it yourself. Even if you could, you might wind up at his place to get the parts that you couldn't get from the dealer, depatment store or hardware sore.
Beyond that, the males of the less well off learned young to fix, repurpose and modify stuff. They learned which repair persons and places to trust to fix the stuff that they couldn't handle themselves. They also learned the preferred parts supplier for parts for various categories of items, stoves, cars, washers and dryers, etc. Though not strictly a male thing, it was mostly guys. So were the shoe repair guys, whereas clothing repairs and alterations were mostly a female province. The kids I ran with didn't know that many clothing, glasses, or shoe brands, but we all knew Thorson, Proto, Craftsman, Crescent, Disston and other major tool makers. Many of us even knew who really made the current version of Craftsman, as well as the ones our dads owned.
Today, not so much. Many things entered into the demise of the build it, fix it, make it yourself culture. Planned obsolescence, including both the unavailability of parts and the astonishing shoddiness of the original items. There's no sense in installing a replacement part in something which is going to pretty much disintegrate in 6 months anyway was one. Mass produced stuff where the parts cost more than replacing the whole damn unit. Pot metal and Plastic, for those who know whereof I speak.
We became a disposable society except for pockets of strange cultists whose mantra of "reduce, re-use, recycle" included an implicit "repair and repurpose" embedded in the idea of "re-use". Those few had no material impact on the exponential growth of our waste, our garbage dumps and landfills and the amounts of heavy metals and other toxics leaching out nto the environment. Waste is just that, waste, of resources, energy, time, money, value, and yet nobody really gave a shit. It was far easier to toss shit, even if it improved the bottom line to repair and reuild. Besides, replacement stuff was shiny and new and cool.
We have of late seen the advent of the "Makers", those who tinker, invent, and fabricate as well as modify and repurpose. They are more often than not of an artisanal ilk and/or those who seek to control both the process and product to meet criteria and standards that they alone impose. Nonetheless, our runaway garbage generation persists. There is a "Maker" culture and they have their own magazine. They too haven't materially reduced our tendency to spawn prodigous amounts of garbage.
Suddenly, on the horizon, there is a new thing, in part motivated by the waste inherent in the disposable society. It was started by a Ms. Postma who created a "Repair café" in Amsterdam (naturally) in 2009. Fixers would meet with those having stuff in need of repair and a tiny bit of the disposable economy would die. The idea spread pretty rapidly. There is now a nonprofit "Repair Café Foundation" with about 1300 associated "Repair café" locales.
One stumbling block is the continued scarcity of parts and manuals. It benefits companies to foster disposability and or to lock in authorized repair sites. That this runs counter to sustainability is, after all, of no concern to the purely profit driven. The next step is to force manufactures to make parts, manuals and tools available for purchase by all. There is some movement on such goals not only in more progressive countries like France and Sweden, but even in some states here. There is also an advocacy and lobbying group here known as the "Repair Association" (https://repair.org/) which is fighting to create and enhance a competitive repair market and culture. I highly recomment a quick look at their web page, I can't do it justice here. The "Repair Café Foundation" (https://repaircafe.org/en/) will help you find or start a "Repair café", and I have no doubt that your local hardware store will glefully sell you tools materials and parts.
OK, that's it, go fix shit. We need to fix the country, the economy and the environment. What better way to get started than to learn how to fix your toaster oven, or at least have it fixed instead of trashed. Repairing things is a revolutionary act, as I'll explain at some later date.
Crossposted from https://caucus99percent.com