The August/September 2026 issue of AARP Magazine mentions last February’s Croton Repair Cafe. To read the article, see below.
Volunteers rewire lamps, mend rips and offer other repairs at free fix-it events held around the country.
by Zohar Lazar
Get repairs for free
Broken items get new life thanks to volunteers who rewire lamps, mend rips and more at free fix-it events held around the country, many of which are part of the Repair Café movement, begun in the Netherlands 17 years ago.
Pat Slaven, 71, a textiles expert and former Consumer Reports product tester who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has helped out at such events, doing stain removal and small sewing fixes. Once, for example, a woman brought in a shirt that had chewing gum on it. No problem — Slaven took out a tube of Bengay, her go-to for stuck-on gum. Another patron had a shirt with ink stains she was sure wouldn’t come out; Slaven got them out using a stain remover called Amodex. After her shift, she even got an assist herself from a fellow volunteer, the bike repair guy, who adjusted the gears on her bicycle.
At a recent Repair Café event at the library in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, volunteers were busy tinkering with broken appliances, jewelry, clothing, even screen doors. Organizers say their team repaired 72 items during the four-hour event and gave instructions for fixing 20 more that were beyond their scope. Chris Osborn, 77, a retired school librarian who previously sewed costumes for school plays, says she volunteers at events in five towns in the area. In Croton, she used thread and her deft hand to repair moth holes in two cashmere sweaters I brought in. “Sewing is not that hard,” she says. “A lot of it is just fiddling.”
Ray Glashoff, 67, brought in a torn screen from a kitchen window, which a crew from a local home-repair company replaced with a new one — a job that might cost $75 in a shop. “I thought they were going to patch it, but they replaced the whole thing,” says Glashoff. “I was so impressed.”
The volunteers clearly loved to help people out, and the patrons loved the results. Even a woman who came and left with a nonworking mixer was pleased, because she got an honest assessment of what her machine needed to be repaired without paying a diagnostic fee.
Join in: At directory.repaircafe.us you can find a list of more than 180 Repair Cafés in the U.S. You can also search online for “repair cafe near me.” Local Facebook groups often tout upcoming events on their pages. Want to start your own? Visit Repair Cafe (https://www.repaircafe.org/en/) to learn how.
