Suzie Fromer is the Coordinator for the Hudson Valley Repair Cafe, a program of Sustainable Hudson Valley
On January 18, 2025, at the Yorktown Repair Cafe in Yorktown Heights, skilled volunteers or ‘repair coaches’ sat at tables fixing things. A broken lamp, a Nespresso machine, a doll with rips in its fabric body, dull knives, ski pants, a brooch. Repair cafe guests toted in these broken items and left instead with ones that were repaired, restored or otherwise refurbished for–wait for it–FREE. All these fixed items were also kept out of the landfill and incinerator. Multiply this impact times several cafes a year (4 in Yorktown’s case) and by the other 67 repair cafes in the Repair Cafe Hudson Valley (RCHV) consortium and you begin to see the impact the repair cafe movement is having on our region.
What IS a Repair Cafe?
Repair Cafes are free, local pop-up events where community members bring their beloved but broken items to be fixed by skilled volunteer repairers and tinkerers who also might just be their neighbors. The International Repair Cafe movement started in Amsterdam in 2009, and community organizer John Wackman started the first in the region in New Paltz in 2013. Since then, repair cafes have spread in every direction throughout the Hudson Valley–and beyond.
Why Bring your Broken Things to a Repair Cafe?
There are many reasons repair should be as known as the 4th ‘r’ along with the familiar trio of reduce, reuse and recycle. In addition to saving us money, repair helps reduce how much garbage we produce. Currently, the average amount of garbage produced by Americans each day is about 4.9 pounds–and that doesn’t even include things like construction debris or municipal waste sludge. Nearly half of that garbage ends up in landfills. If, instead, one could regularly attend a local repair cafe and get most of those items fixed, that number would be significantly reduced. Repair Cafe success rates are consistently around 75%, with additional items fixed thanks to advice given or after needed parts which were identified get purchased.
Why Do People Volunteer at Repair Cafes?
You actually don’t have to be an expert to be a repair coach at a cafe. We certainly do have many electrical and mechanical engineers on our roster, but there are also a lot of self taught ‘tinkerers,’ hobby sewists, amateur knife sharpeners and weekend jewelry makers at our cafes. Our repair coaches love to problem solve, and the volume and range of items that come in to be fixed at a repair cafe keeps them on their toes. Simply put–it’s a lot of fun for the fixers. They enjoy working together on a tough fix, sharing tools and know how with one another and teaching anyone who wants to learn how it’s done.
But fixers aren’t our only important volunteers. Each cafe has a volunteer organizing team as well as ‘day of ‘ volunteers who help keep the cafes running smoothly. We even need home bakers to supply us with snacks for the guests–it’s called a Repair ‘Cafe’ for a reason and there is always coffee, tea and light refreshments for the guests as we welcome them to our community events. Because repair cafes do not provide a drop off service–instead, pull up a seat, watch the repair ahead of you or visit with someone you may not have seen for a while while you wait your turn. And when it is your turn, you’ll sit with the fixer working on your item and learn about how the repair is done. Maybe you’ll be so inspired and empowered, you’ll be able to rewire your own lamp or sew your own garment next time. Or maybe you’ll come back to the next cafe with another repair–as long as you’re repairing an item instead of tossing it, we’ll be thrilled.
So? Can we get Repair Cafes in Yonkers?
Absolutely! In fact, there actually WAS a repair cafe last year at the Crestwood Library and their tentative date for their next cafe is currently Saturday, May 17th; for more information, please contact Jackie Leone.
RCHV also gets regular inquiries about holding repair cafes in Yonkers, and we’d be more than happy to help out–but first there needs to be a local organizer interested in spearheading a cafe. So if you have any interest in helping start another repair cafe in Yonkers, please contact me at this email.
Can’t wait for the next one at Crestwood? All of our repair cafes are free and open to the public, so if you feel like seeing what a repair cafe is all about, check here for our calendar of repair cafes throughout the Hudson Valley.
