On Saturday morning, about two dozen people lugged broken appliances, bags of torn clothing, a circular saw and wonky lamps to the Belfast Repair Cafe, where a squad of volunteer tinkers and stitchers was on hand to try to fix them up.
“We always say to bring whatever you can carry in,” said Sasha Kutsy, a volunteer with Belfast Community Works, which puts the event on Waldo County YMCA on the third Saturday each month. Lamps and vacuum cleaners are some of the most common items to come in, she said.
Debbie Bailly, of Belfast, sat beside a volunteer who was helping wipe her data from a computer she was planning to sell. The last time Bailly had work done on the computer, it cost $90 an hour.
“So I thought, well, might as well try it here,” she said.
Saturday’s scene in Belfast is a familiar one around Maine. The popular repair cafe is one of thousands worldwide, including several in Maine, and it started more than half a dozen years ago.
But the cafe has been busier in recent months, as costs rise and people struggle to even find people to do repairs, said Monica Morris, who helps coordinate the event.
Nearly half of American families can’t afford to cover essential expenses and live securely, according to recent research from The Urban Institute. For some, repairing e what they already have is a way to find a little economic breathing room.
Nearby, Andrea Watkins waited while a volunteer seamstress fixed the pockets of a summer dress she’d found at a clothing swap. “I brought it here today to give it a new life,” she said.
Watkins comes a couple of times a year with clothing to be mended, since paying for clothing repairs has become too expensive for her to afford, she said.
“For low income people like myself, this is something I don’t have to spend money on,” she said.
Bailly, like many at the repair cafe, was motivated by both economic and environmental concerns.
“I think that we have to do anything we can to protect the environment,” she said. “So reusing things, getting them fixed rather than buying new, it’s absolutely essential.”
At another table, Lizzie Hogg waited as Howard Green worked on a part of her sewing machine that had been getting stuck and breaking her needles. Over the years, she’s brought everything from fans to an old tube radio to be fixed at the repair cafe.
Hogg said that while economics are a factor, the greater pull is “just not filling up trash mountain.”
By watching volunteers, she’s also learned to fix more things and to feel more confident trying to repair things like her children’s toys herself.
“Now I have more resilience to be like, ‘I can take this apart.’”
In general, older things are often easier to repair, Kutsy said. “The older, the better,” she said. “Newer stuff is just glued together and it’s only supposed to last a little bit.”
But Green, who likes to “look at things sideways” is trying to find ways around that. It can be hard to open up some kitchen appliances to work on their motors since they’re often now put together with plastic pins instead of screws, he said. But he’s figured out how to drill out the plastic pins and make new ones.
“It was a long time before I realized that there’s a way in here that’s interesting,” he said. “So even the crappy stuff can be fixed, in some cases.”
