Beyond Repairs

Don’t ditch it, fix it. A growing band of Australians is rediscovering the rewards and satisfaction that come from mending household items, writes Sarah Pickette.

- Sarah Pickette

We recently bought a new washing machine. This may not sound too exciting to you, but it was quite a big deal in our house. Our old machine was purchased second-hand and had been on its last legs for a while. Every so often, something would blow a small but important component of the motor and, when it did, my partner Shaun would mutter a curse, order a new part online, grab a screwdriver and fix the blasted thing. He did this not once, not twice, but at least six times, until we eventually decided it was time to upgrade.

He also repaired the slow cooker, gluing the top of the ceramic pot carefully back together with Araldite after I dropped it on the kitchen floor. I used it like that for years. And once, when the plastic shelf in our fridge door shattered, he fashioned a new one. To this day, we may be the only family in the world to have had a timber shelf in their fridge. It’s not a trend I see taking off, but it did the job and cost us nothing.

Shaun is not a handyman or a tradie; he’s a business journalist who sets off to the Sydney CBD in a suit five days a week. He’s also, without realising it, part of a grounds well of Australians adopting a ‘don’t replace it, repair it’ mindset and who’ll mend or make do instead of automatically buying anew.

Repair cafes, where volunteers gather to help people fix household items, are springing up across Australia. A multitude of small businesses have been built on the notion of up cycling, where old or discarded materials are transformed into useful, appealing items. Mending groups gather in living rooms to give new life to old clothes and Men’s Sheds around the country are keeping all manner of fixing skills alive.