Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and REPAIR!

Date:   11/30/2012 11:39:46 PM ( 12 y ago)

Yesterday and today were fix-it days for some of the things I own:

-I FINALLY had two pieces of 10” X 12” glass cut for two picture frames I put together myself several years ago, and found out from the shop owner that they fix broken window cranks and window screens. My house is 53 years old with equally old window cranks—3 of which are broken, and window screens that are getting rather “holey”.

-While waiting for the glass to be cut, I took my 46 year old brass lamp in for repair at the lamp experts next door to the glass dealer; I also bought four new 3-foot long tube florescent light bulbs for the kitchen—the old ones finally gave out after over 20 years.

-The lamp people referred me to an electrician where I took my 10 year old portable car air filter in to have some wires fixed. While at the electricians I found out they fix any kind of old kitchen appliance you can think of. Happily, I salvaged my 7 year old broken toaster oven from its exile in the garage to bring in and have them look at it; they’re even willing to see if they can resurrect my 20 year old electric lawn mower that went kaput this year. Any electrical gadget they can’t fix, they’ll recycle for you.

-At the same time, I was having my family’s two cars serviced—a 14 year old car I call “Grandma” who needed a new compressor and new right front axle and the other an 11 year old “youngster” that was, thank goodness, in great shape—except for the timing belt that needed replacing because it had 90,000 miles on it.

You can probably tell from this post that I keep old things. Partly it’s because of a tight budget—it’s less expensive to fix the old than to buy new; partly it’s because of my chemical sensitivity—new things generally have to go through a period of out gassing of toxic chemicals (VOC’s/formaldehyde, etc) before I can tolerate them; and partly because I dislike immensely the wastefulness of our throw-away materialistic culture. I was very surprised, and pleased, to find a shop that fixed old kitchen appliances—until today I didn’t even know it existed. And all of the repair places were local—within 6 miles of my house. When I use the term "The Four R's: reduce, reuse, recycle and REPAIR”, I mean it.


 

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