Why would you want to repair anything?
In shop class in school, I’ve always had good grades. Not because I created nice things but because I repaired the broken tools in the workshop. I vividly remember a circular hand saw that no longer worked. I probably wasn’t even allowed to use it without supervision, but I opened it up and found a bad solder joint. After soldering it back in it worked again and the teacher was very happy.
Since then, I’ve been repairing (and building) stuff all my live. I always wanted to know how stuff worked and didn’t want to waste perfectly good things only because they were not working. I’ve joined a Repair-Café recently to use my repair skills even more.
I want to start writing about how everybody can repair their stuff. There are already a lot of good sources out there, but I would like to add my perspective and my experience. My focus will probably be on electronic and electromechanical devices, but I tend to try to fix other stuff as well. To be honest, I don’t have much experience blogging so the learning curve will be there.
In this first story I would like to help you find your reason to repair your things. This is a theoretical but nonetheless important issue. In the future I intent to mostly cover the practical side of repair and related subjects such as safety.
The first thing you need before starting a repair is the proper motivation. If you always think “meh, it’s not worth the hassle, I’ll just buy a new one” you will never start a repair, never get a repair habit, and never profit from the advantages. To find YOUR motivation, you have to find what is important for you.
Let’s have a look at the different reasons why people could and should repair their stuff:
One very important aspect is the environmental impact of repair. By throwing away an object and buying a new one, you harm the environment. The thing you threw away will have to be disposed of or it has to be recycled. Either uses energy and harms the environment. The new object will have to be produced and shipped to your location. In contrast, the repaired object requires much less energy and thus harms the environment less.
If you own a thing for some time, you get used to it. You know the perks and tricks how the thing works. If this thing breaks, and you replace it, you have to learn everything new with your new object. You can keep using the items you are used to and know how they work. You do not have to evaluate something new.
A lot of people no longer know how many things work. Sure, some of them are really complex and hard to understand, but many can be understood. By working on a device, you can learn how it does what it does. This can be a great motivation to open a device and see why it does what it does. A big advantage of trying to repair something broken is the fact, that you can’t break it more, it already stopped working!
A point that goes together with the environmental impact is cost. Repair usually costs significantly less than a buying something new. Even if a repair costs 30% of the new price of an object, you just have to keep using it for 30% longer and you break even (easy, isn’t it?). For most repaired things this is a very simple goal to reach. Furthermore, many repairs are very cheap, once you can do them yourself!
The last aspect I want to show is the fun and the sense of achievement of getting something to work again. Even a small repair like replacing a fuse can make you happy when the broken device works again. More difficult repairs have a riddle-like aspect. Instead of solving a Sudoku, try to find out what is wrong with your thing. The feeling you get after a difficult repair is just great!
Conclusion
There are many reasons to repair your stuff. Which one applies to you, you have to know yourself. Regardless of the motivation, the best thing is to just start. Remember, the thing is already dead, you can’t make it any worse!
Thanks for reading this far. There is certainly a lot to improve on so I would love to read any comments or ideas.
