My dad still fixes stuff – one of the children’s toys, a broken chair, a pair of shoes. And I love it.
But sadly, the art of fixing ‘stuff’ seems to be dying . Most of my generation has grown up with more shops than you can ever imagine, stocking everything you could ever need or want, only 5 or 10 minutes away. Something breaks, and my first thought is ‘well, I’ll have to pick up a new one next time I’m at the shops’. There is an underlying assumption that that is the quickest, most efficient and most cost effective option. But this certainly isn’t always the case.
I challenged my own thinking here a little while ago when I needed a new childproof gate for the stairway. Our old gate was too large for the stairway space, so immediately I thought of buying a new one from Bunnings. It would only be a 45 minute round trip to pop to the shops and buy one, and the cost would most likely be around $100 (if I ACTUALLY managed to enter and leave Bunnings with only the thing I needed – a rare event for me!). Easy right?
Enter my dad – Mr Fix It. Straight away he looked at the old gate and said ‘why don’t we just resize the one you have already?’ He recruited a little 4 year old helper and away they went to the shed. An hour and a half later (things tend to take a little longer with a little person assisting!) and the new ‘old’ gate was up and functional.
Tom had a valuable lesson in fixing or reusing what you have, as well as that feeling of pride that comes when a four year old truly believes he has helped with an important job. Of course that was one baby gate that avoided the fate of landfill, and I avoided having to go to Bunnings and be tempted to buy stuff I don’t need!
But even on a financial level, unless your time is worth more than $133 an hour*, then taking the time to repair the gate makes sense as well. Not to mention the fact that there is a wonderful satisfaction in fixing something – it’s FUN!
So I challenge you next time when something breaks, and it actually needs replacing, to think about how long it would take to fix, whether it might actually be a fun thing to do anyway, and to spare a thought that even accounting for your time, it may still end up being the most cost effective option.
Do you immediately think about buying something new when an item needs replacing in your house? Or do you have that wonderful old school approach of fixing stuff? I’d love to hear your thoughts xo
*The boring stuff – My calc was based on the repair taking 1 and 1/2 hours, the trip to the shops taking a total of 45 minutes and the new gate costing $100 (and assuming you can go to the shop without buying crap you don’t need)
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