Big turnout of volunteers, participants, make first KCMO Repair Cafe a success

By Sarah Pope

A portable DVD player. A lamp. A laptop. Barstools. Pajama pants. All of these things and a boatload more avoided the landfill when they were repaired on Jan. 25 at the first Repair Cafe hosted by Re.Use.Full at South-Broadland Presbyterian Church in Kansas City, Mo.  

A repair cafe brings together volunteers with experience fixing things—anything from bikes to computers to clothing to household electronics together—with community members to help them fix their stuff. It’s a simple concept that first started in the Netherlands about 15 years ago. Now, similar events are regularly hosted throughout the European Union and beginning to catch on in the United States, says Re.Use.Full founder and CEO Leslie Scott.

“I think there is a desire for people to think about how to live more sustainably and their consumer choices are certainly playing into that,” Scott said. “If they can have something repaired rather than having to throw it away and take space in the landfill, they will.”

Waldo resident Jesse Rizzo volunteered to help as a computer repair specialist. He works as a software developer and enjoys repairing computers as a hobby.

“I like fixing stuff and I like the idea of things not being thrown away,” he said.

Rizzo’s first project on Saturday was to help Merlene Eads with her laptop. Eads brought some barstools to the event to have the woven seats replaced and when she saw that computer help was available, she signed up. 

“I’m so happy he’s here,” Eads said of Rizzo. 

Craig Robinson, a volunteer at the electronics table, signed up because he’s “kinda handy”— a skillset he’s been building since he first learned how to repair typesetting equipment in the 1970s. His first project was to repair a portable DVD player that was probably nine or 10 years old. 

“In electronics, that’s generations old,” said Jennifer Blattman, who attended the repair event with her son, Max Howard, the owner of the DVD player. “Technology moves really fast.”

Blattman said when her son was young he was so moved by the Disney movie Wall-E, about a lonesome robot who is left to clean up a littered planet, that he never wants to throw anything away. The DVD players, purchased to entertain Max and his brother on trips, were the perfect size for the boys to carry in their backpacks. More modern versions of portable DVD players lack the small size of the older models. 

“The new ones are huge,” Blattman said. “In an attempt to make them better they made them huge.”

In equal parts practicality and sentimentality, Blattman and Howard patiently watched and waited while Robinson tinkered with the player. As she watched Robinson work, Blattman lamented the loss of repair skills that she sees in the older generations of her family 

“My family built houses and cars,” she said. “They took things apart and then put them back together. People today don’t know how to do it.” 

She admires skills of volunteers like Robinson who can fiddle with something and diagnose an issue.

“It’s a skill almost like languages, like how some people can just pick up a new language,” she said. “I feel like this is that type of skillset.”

Isla Coates, 11, who attended the repair cafe with her mother and brother, said her passion for the environment drew her to the event. The family brought a broken lamp and several articles of clothing that needed mending. 

“I don’t like pollution or when people litter or anything like that,” she said. “The one thing I wish for more than world peace is no more pollution. It’s just disgusting.”

Her mother, Andrea, was so impressed with the event that she plans to bring a hand-held vacuum cleaner to the next Repair Cafe. 

“Again, it’s about landfills,” she said. “Why throw it away when you can fix it?”

The next Repair Cafe will be hosted at the Matt Ross Community Center on Saturday, Feb. 1, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 8101 Marty in Overland Park, Kan.