The Tuscaloosa Public Library hosted its first Repair Cafe event Saturday. The event served as an opportunity for community members to bring household appliances, electronics, clothes and broken items to be repaired by a team of volunteers.
Not only are items fixed at these events part of a growing global movement originating in Europe, but people are given hands-on experience in troubleshooting and maintaining their own appliances, increasing self-sufficiency, saving money and keeping easily fixed items out of the trash.
“If you’ve ever been to a landfill, you’d just see trucks and trucks dumping ‘trash’ that could be fixed,” said Craig Hoadley, one of the event’s volunteers. “The problem is that here in the U.S., we have planned obsolescence.”
The organizer of the event, TPL adult services librarian Kayla Sikes, requested that instead of students throwing away their broken appliances and electronics, they save them until another repair event.
“We do have a table for the kids called the ‘take-it-apart table,’ which is where kids just get to learn how things work by basically destroying the stuff,” she said. “They take it apart, they see what the insides look like.”
Jacob Waller, a sophomore majoring in political science and history, said he found the event very useful and was excited about getting his printer fixed with the help of a few volunteers.
“I’ve just had it sitting in my room since October and never really could figure out how to make it work properly after finals week,” he said. “Having a program where they can teach me is great.”
Sikes said she was especially enthusiastic about the future of the program.
“We definitely want to make it recurring,” she said. “We want to repeat it, maybe even three to four times a year.”