WNC Repair Cafe is offering several full service repair events in collaboration with the Asheville Tool Library at Smith Mill Works in 2023. The Asheville Tool Library is a non-profit serving more than 600 members with over 2000 tools. Their mission is to provide low-cost access to a wide range of tools, literature, and knowledge to citizens of Western North Carolina through sliding scale and sponsored memberships.
The Tool Library began as a 100% volunteer-run non-profit and they still provide a wide range of volunteer opportunities. However, their growth has allowed them to start offering living wage employment. Since starting in 2015, the Asheville Tool Library has grown to serve their community with the simple necessities like lawn mowers and circular saws, as well as more unique tools like camping equipment, a wood splitter, and even a guitar. The Tool Library moved into a new location in October 2022, expanding to 2000 sq ft of space for tools, workshops, tools sales, and community events.
Since 2017, WNC Repair Cafe has been organizing Repair Cafes in the Hendersonville and Asheville areas. A Repair Cafe is an event where volunteers with tools and supplies provide hands-on help to fix broken household objects at no cost while helping patrons develop the confidence and skills to make their own repairs in the future.
At each event, the public is invited to bring in anything from their homes for repair. Small appliances, lamps, furniture, tools, small engines, and even cherished family heirlooms are all welcome at Repair Cafe events. While the volunteers have been recruited as specialists in certain areas, the scope of the repairs is limited only by the imagination of the patrons; if an item is broken or damaged, volunteers at the Repair Cafe will try their best to fix it.
Repair Cafes appeal to patrons because they are free and they promote environmental stewardship as well as thriftiness. Repair Cafes are a way to keep objects out of landfills and give them new life. Some patrons have heirloom objects they don’t know where to turn for help repairing- WNC Repair Cafe can help! In the context of a consumer-debt driven economy and throw-away culture, Repair Cafes are all about building resilience, sustainability, and community.
Within the communities served, Repair Cafes offer a place to practice resistance to that throwaway culture and have nuanced conversations about resilience, sustainability, and grassroots organizing surrounding resilience and sustainability. At Repair Cafes, skills are shared and patrons are assisted in determining whether they should repair or replace their items.
Repair Cafes prevent household goods from ending up in landfills while simultaneously saving patrons money and helping them to develop the confidence to take on future repairs on their own or with help from a future Repair Cafe event.
Volunteers with technical skills that are not always seen as valuable have an opportunity to give back to their communities by passing on their knowledge to those who can appreciate and benefit from it. A shift away from throwaway culture emboldens professional repair shops and helps create markets for spare parts. Participating in Repair Cafe events may even lead consumers to demand products that are built to last.
If you would like more information about The Asheville Tool Library, please call Stephanie Kane at 216-577-1408 or email [email protected].
For more information about WNC Repair Cafe, send an email to Dan Hettinger at [email protected] or visit https://wncrepaircafe.blogspot.com/ or the WNC Repair Cafe Facebook Page (https://www.facebook.com/WNCRepairCafe/ ).
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