The revolutionary act of repair

This story aired in the August 26, 2026 episode of Crosscurrents.

Fast fashion has made updating a wardrobe easier than it used to be… but cheap apparel tends to have a short shelf life. Hems fail, zippers break — even before the clothes fall out of fashion. And it’s not just clothes. Many household goods don’t hold up very long, either.

Often, these things end up at the dump. That’s because people don’t know how to repair them… or doing so would cost more than the thing is worth. And sometimes, an old, cherished item stops working. But repair services are becoming more accessible.

We held a repair clinic at our downtown studio. Free events like that are becoming popular in the Bay Area. Handy volunteers bring their tools or sewing kits and help fix what’s broken.

Before the clinic, KALW climate reporter Mary Catherine led a discussion about the repair movement with three experts. Cindy Navarro, a coach with the Fix-It Clinics, said “joy” is the word that sums up what she loves about repair.

“To make something broken usable and to keep it out of the landfill is a joyous event, and I love doing it,” she said. “I think everybody should learn how to do it, and it doesn't mean you have to be an engineer. You just have to be patient.”

Joining Cindy on the panel were Claire Bonham-Carter, who co-founded the Haight-NOPA Repair Cafe in San Francisco, and Phoebe Schenker, executive director of the Reuse Alliance in Sonoma County. Click “Listen” above to hear an excerpt from their discussion. It starts with Mary Catherine asking Claire and Phoebe how their respective repair services differ.

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Excerpt Transcript:

REPORTER: I know that with the Fix-It Clinic, you come with your broken thing, and you see it being repaired, and you learn how to repair it. That's the hook. Whereas, Claire, I want you to describe a little bit more about the Repair Café. What is your approach, and is it different from that?

CLAIRE BONHAM-CARTER: Our repairers are less coaches. They're going to take on repairing the thing. That's not to say that they won't be absolutely showing you what they're doing. And you may well leave — and I've had a bunch of people come to the Repair Café saying, "Oh, well, if my lamp breaks again, I know what to do now. I will be able to fix it." 

But I guess the Repair Café is catering to people for whom the idea of trying to fix their KitchenAid is just way, way beyond them, or the CD player or whatever it is, but they still have this desire for it to be used, to keep using it.

The folks that come in with sewing are much more likely to be able to maybe leave knowing how to sew on that button next time. But there is, there's just not that coach element to it. So it's a different expectation, and I think they're both super valuable. But you may not go to a Fixit Clinic because you think, "I don't know where to start to fix my DVD player." But who knows? You may come to the Repair Café and then realize that you wanna learn how to do it anyway. 

REPORTER: Phoebe, talk a little bit about Reuse Alliance and your ethos. You guys are a bit of a different animal. You have a permanent space. Share more about that.

PHOEBE SCHENKER: We call them repair fairs, and you would recognize the same elements. But we try to pair that also with a clothing or book swap or with repurposed craft activities. We  like to say, "Come for the repair, stay for all the types of reuse."

We opened the Reuse Hub exactly because we found people wanted to learn the skills, but we are seeing the volunteers feel pressured to see all of the items. You know, we do between 70 and 100 things at an event. So there wasn't time to really teach people how to solder. And so we opened the Reuse Hub to be able to teach workshops to really give people those skills. Maybe they want to practice on something that's not their waffle iron from 25 years ago, and they can learn the skills and work their way up to that.

I think there's also an element for us of education that's not just about the repair, but is about being a smart consumer of things. 

So we make people stay with their item, and they have to watch the process, and you learn a lot about what things are not fixable that way, and what things to look for in the items that you are purchasing in the future in order for them to be more likely to be repaired.

I'm sure you guys have the same experience. The older things are, the more likely they are to be repaired, because they were made with fasteners and metal and wood and, and materials that can be repaired, and so you start to learn how to shop smarter in the future.

REPORTER: By having resources to get things fixed for free because you don't know how to do it yourself, is there a scenario in which this undercuts the professions — the professional cobbler, the professional electronics fixer, et cetera?

CINDY NAVARRO: I personally think that this movement has occurred because … There are very few vacuum cleaner repair persons. Very few sewing machine places. There used to be one in every neighborhood. There is not one in every neighborhood. You're lucky if there's a grocery store in every neighborhood. So the removal of those things…has made it necessary for the people that want to keep their things working to learn how. 

And the people and these movements make it available for them to learn. I don't think a repair clinic takes any money away from anybody that's got a repair shop.

CLAIRE: I think it's the opposite. I think it will actually create demand for more repairers. Because of supply and demand, that's simple economics. And I think to date, people have forgotten that things can be repaired.

You can get things so cheaply, it's way easier just to buy a new one from Amazon. The title of this event, The Revolutionary Act of Repair,” I mean, to me, that's a revolution. Stop buying from Amazon or other places. Buy better stuff that lasts longer, and get into this idea of “we can repair things.”

That is going to stimulate more people thinking, "I want to have this thing fixed," and they will seek out a professional. They may come to a Fixit clinic or a cafe and find out that the thing has to have a professional do it, but this repairer nearly got there, or the repairer said, "You just need this part, which we don't have. Go and get the part, and then it will get repaired." 

PHOEBE: I think a big part of it is connecting people to those resources, too. I think people — they don't know that repair shops exist. And a lot of what we do is refer people to the existing resources and generate business for those repair shops. Because things can't be done, always, by the volunteers. We don't have the parts or the specialties.

But also, you know, we're doing 25 events a year. So there's no way for the community events to fill the void of a repair shop. So hopefully, what they're doing is generating demand, making people value repair, see what goes into it, maybe inspiring younger generations to get into repair as a profession, because there's real demand for more people with those skills to be learning those jobs and to be providing that service. 

REPORTER: Claire, I know you have some numbers for us.

CLAIRE:  We've seen 300 items, approximately. Thirty percent of the items seen have been electrical, and about thirty percent have been clothes, apparel of some nature. Eighteen percent appliances, eleven percent jewelry, and eight percent other. But what's interesting is when you look at the percent of the success we have within those categories, and clothes goes from thirty to ninety-four percent.

So if you bring in an item of clothing, you're likely to go away happy.

This little prop (rings chime). When something gets repaired at our cafe, we ring the bell and everybody cheers in the room. It's wonderful. Apparently last time, my partner was on checkout, and it got very busy at the end, and he had some people who checked out, and then they left.

And then they came back, and they said, "But you didn't ring the bell for us." So then it was like, "Okay, ring the bell!”