If there’s a vacuum, lamp or most any small device gathering dust in your closet because it stopped working, a free event this week could help give it a second life, saving you money and keeping it out of the landfill. Troy Oppie takes you behind the scenes ahead of the city of Boise’s 6th “Repair Cafe." transcript below
Boise Repiar Cafe Event Details:
Thursday, August 28, 4-7 p.m. JUMP 5th floor
The Repair Café will have repair stations for clothing and textiles, small electrical appliances, non-electrical household items, personal electronics, books, and general glue and adhesive. Suitable items for repair include clothing, linens, shoes, bags, lamps, kitchen appliances, vacuum cleaners, tools, mobile devices, toys, jewelry, ceramics, wood, plastics, books and more. If you think it can be repaired at one of our repair stations, let’s give it a try! One (1) item per person. Items must weigh under 50 lbs. You must be able to carry your item to, during and from the event.
We will not be repairing bicycles, firearms, knives and blades, large appliances, gas-powered machinery, or any item that could create a health or safety hazard. No pets or unattended minors, please.
Audio Transcript:
Since Boise first joined the Repair Cafe movement in 2023, local residents have brought about 500 items like clothes, small electronics and appliances to be repaired.
"Things like vacuum cleaners, lamps, kitchen appliances"
That’s The City of Boise’s CurbIt program coordinator Catherine Milner.
"About three-quarters of those items have been fixed, and that has prevented 1,700 pounds of waste from going to the landfill. And that has saved people approximately $30,000 worth of money on their goods"
The Repair Cafe movement started about 15 years ago in the Netherlands. Garden City’s Reuseum has hosted these events before, and cafes have happened in Moscow, too, but Boise’s event is currently the only regular repair cafe event in the state.
Milner says her volunteer pool now includes about three dozen ‘fixers’
"We have a group of folks from HP [Hewlett Packard] who are helping fix electrical appliances. We have folks at BSU's Maker Lab who volunteer. And then just word-of-mouth. I think many people know a tinkerer in their life, and when they find out about this event, they pass along the information."
One of those fixers is Dave Hugg, a former chemical engineer who returned to his native Idaho after retiring.
"One of the strengths of the repair cafe is the skill set of the people involved. If I can't fix it, I can certainly find someone amongst the other 40 people in the room who's going to be able to give some insight there."
I asked Hugg to take me through his process, conveniently - for me - with a broken turntable that came from my own parent’s house.
"The very first thing I would do is get on the internet and see if I can find a user guide for this equipment."
Then, disassembly begins.
[sounds of taking the item apart]
"I think I need to take out a couple more screws here."
The circuit board on the four-decade old turntable comes off. Hugg guesses the dozens of resistors, capacitors and chips were hand-soldered.
"Now I'm going to disassemble the motor base and see what we can find here."
[Reporter] “oh look at that”
[Hugg] “What they use is their magnetic coils in this drive that are driving the turntable itself. So the coils generate a magnetic field that forces this to turn. So what does that tell me? It tells me that - this isn't turning isn't a mechanical problem, it's an electrical problem."
Somewhere on that circuit board is a component that’s no longer working. At the repair cafe, volunteers might have a multimeter or other tools that could help find it, but on this particular morning, we don’t have one, and...
[Hugg] "it could take us a couple of hours to do that."
Hugg says he’s seen cell phones and other more modern electronic devices be fixed at previous events, but there’s no guarantee.
"It's intimidating getting in and working on those, because you could go into fix A and very easily break B if you're not careful."
But now I have a diagnosis, and hope of a second life for this turntable, which is well-worth keeping.
"This is a pretty high quality piece of equipment and well worth repairing. And then it might be good for another 30 or 40 years."
That's good enough for me today, but here’s what success at a repair cafe sounds like….
[sound of someone dinging a bellhop bell and cheering in the background]
But even if an item can’t be repaired on site or is found to be beyond repair, Milner says going through the process can be just as impactful as a positive outcome.
"Over half of participants have said, thanks to these events, the learning that I've witnessed from working with a volunteer, I would be more likely to fix my own things at home."
The next Repair Cafe is Thursday evening at JUMP in Boise, from 4-7 p.m. on the 5th floor. Troy Oppie, Boise State Public Radio News.
