LET’S BE CREATIVE: December 7, 2023

By DOUG LA ROCQUE

CHATHAM – According to the Repair Café foundation, there are now over 2,200 Repair Cafés worldwide. On their website they lament that it is now the trend to throw away vast amounts of stuff, even things that have almost nothing wrong and which could get a new lease on life after a simple repair. The foundation says, “The trouble is, lots of people have forgotten that they can repair things themselves. Especially the younger generations, who no longer know how to do that sort of thing.”

The very first Repair Café was held back in 2009 in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The unique concept of “fixers” or repair experts diagnosing and most times, repairing broken items such as lamps and other small electrical appliances, clocks, and even little children’s dolls, became so popular it quickly spread across the European continent and eventually to the shores of the United States. In April of this year, the Today Show held a live nationally broadcast Repair Café highlighting the growing number of such events around the country.

The first Repair Cafés appeared in the Hudson Valley in 2013 and are now popular from Westchester to Rensselaer counties. A local group, the Columbia Northeast Repair Café emerged from the Climate Smart Committees in New Lebanon, Chatham and Austerlitz. The fourth community in this group is East Nassau, which borders Columbia County.

Columbia Northeast started holding Repair Cafés in October of 2021 including a large event at the Columbia County Climate Carnival at the fairgrounds last July. So far this year, events have been held in Austerlitz and just recently in New Lebanon. New Lebanon Supervisor Tistrya Houghtling said, “The repair cafe is a wonderful opportunity to fix those beloved items, eliminating the need to buy replacement items as well as keeping things out of our landfills! It is a fun and engaging event where community ‘fixers’ come together to volunteer to repair broken items. It is a fun event for all ages and full of community spirit and neighbors helping one another.”

The next scheduled Repair Café will be held in Chatham on Saturday, June 24 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The event takes place at the Chatham Fire Department at 2 Hoffman Street (NYS Route 66) in the village. The local “fixers” will be glad to work on your bikes, clocks, lamps, small electronics, lawn mowers, jewelry, small wood furniture and much more. The last Repair Café for the year will be held in September in East Nassau. In all, it is estimated some 450 items will be made new again from these four events.

The Columbia NE Repair Café is always on the lookout for more repair experts. If you are interested in using your handyman or handywoman talents to help out others, save them some money and lighten the load on landfills you may email ColumbiaNERepairCafe@gmail. Com