A July Repair Café in Redmond

The July Repair Café at SCP Redmond Hotel was my first Repair Café as Rethink Waste Program Manager, and thanks to the support of other staff (looking at you, Lindsey, Priscilla, and our awesome intern, Kyla), the selflessness of our 10 fixer volunteers (including many first timers!), and the patience and understanding of all attendees, I’m glad to report that it was a smashing success!

It was our most highly attended Repair Café in Redmond, with more than 40 attendees who brought a combined 50 items to be fixed! It was a busy event with lines forming both outside and inside. We appreciate the diligence of our fixer volunteers and want to give a thanks to all the attendees who patiently waited in line for their turn.

This was a unique event, because we also had Danielle and Beth from Central Oregon Serger and Sewing Machine Rescue-Rehab-Rehome join us both fixing folks’ sewing machines and sergers, and also offering a few sewing machines to be re-homed. Fixing machines that can be used to mend clothes, and then giving those away to help more folks fix their own clothes. What a wonderful idea and such a win-win-win opportunity! Most definitely a way to Rethink Waste. A big thanks to both of them and all our new fixer volunteers for making this event a success.

Overall, half of the items were repaired at the event. For those that weren’t, we heard from many attendees, that they still appreciated leaving with a better idea of the issue to determine whether it was repairable either by themselves with additional instructions and tools, or if they could take it to a specific shop that could, or if it was just something that didn’t make technical or financial sense to repair.

Here are some comments that were left:

It was a GOOD Experience, gave me instructions to clean the nozzles

Thank you so much! Perfect fix

excellent help, friendly people

Beth and Danielle were amazing! I learned how to thread a bobbin too!

Great info! Dave helped me know what to replace. Thank you!

Thank you so much for fixing my boots! smart, precise patchwork

Pleasant experience Dave! He explained what he was doing in approaching a “fix”. I’ll be back- beats anything more going in the landfill!

Wasn’t really broken but received great maintenance and trouble shooting advice!

Screw is stripped and it won’t fit back together, also missing a small spring

Interesting to see and appreciate Robert’s efforts

Great, good people, tried to fix, wonderful

very very happy you all were here

Here are some photos showing off fixers busy at work and everyone having a great time. Thanks to Kyla for capturing many of these photos!

And lastly, we even had a special surprise guest, Udara Abeysekera Bickett, previous manager of the Rethink Waste Project, give us a visit 🙂

We’ll announce our next Repair Café shortly. We hope to hold more of these events going forward. We’re looking for fixer volunteers to make this possible. If you’re handy or love fixing things, please sign up or reach out to kavi@envirocenter.org with any questions.

Thanks for reading!

Kavi