
We Lost Our Ability to Mend - imartin2k
https://dieworkwear.com/post/182126040434/how-we-lost-our-ability-to-mend
======
sokoloff
A friend was recently complaining about having to buy a new $2000 fridge, how
his old one only lasted 8 years, and how everything is junk nowadays. He
described the symptoms to me [gradual loss of cooling capability, soft ice
cream, then melting ice cubes] and I told him I solved the same problem 2
years ago and his was almost surely a broken defrost heater leading to a
totally iced up [therefore no airflow] cooling unit, that troubleshooting
would take him 15 minutes to confirm, and if that was it, it was a $20
90-minute repair (most of which is waiting for the freezer to defrost).

He looked at me like I had 3 heads to even consider a fridge repair and a week
or so later sent me a pic of his new, $2000 fridge in place. I tried.

~~~
alanbernstein
On the other hand, I had a not-too-old fridge with a broken ice maker, which I
tried to repair. The replaceable part was "the whole ice maker", which was out
of production and not available anywhere. With some knowledge of electronics
and 3d printing, I could probably get it working again, but at the cost of
multiple hours of my free time, with no guarantee of success. The best
intentions can't always defeat planned obsolescence.

~~~
nadezhda18
this!

It's almost my story as well.

My microwave I had for 8 years (and I got it second hand) stopped working. A
quick inspection + watching a couple of YouTube videos revealed that a plastic
latch inside the door got broken.

It would have been very easy to replace it if only it was still being sold.
Extensive search on the internet showed it was not :( :( :(

If only I had some time (well a LOT of time) to reverse engineer the existing
latch and 3D-print a new one... But I did not.

So, I had to put the microwave outside on my curb. I attached a note to it
saying it works well if the latch is fixed and also attached the broken latch.

I was happy to see it was gone in a few hours. I live in a city (Montreal,
Canada) so I guess it helped my microwave to not be wasted.

I wish 3D-printing technologies - or more precisely, a technology that helps
to create 3D specs out of an existing object - would be more advanced. Well, I
did not do an extensive search about it so I may be well mistaken :)

~~~
nwellinghoff
I often find it much faster for me to "widdle" small parts using my "art"
skills. Just get a piece of plastic or metal and a dremal and carve it. In 30
min you will have a latch... making a 3d printing model takes forrrrrevvverrr

~~~
wlesieutre
One advantage of 3D printers is that the part you need might already be
designed, you can find all sorts of things on thingiverse. Once the design
exists any number of people can use it.

~~~
nadezhda18
Good suggestion, I did not think of search _3D printing designs_. The model of
my microwave is pretty common. Oh well.

~~~
wlesieutre
[https://www.youmagine.com/](https://www.youmagine.com/) is another one to
check on

------
crazygringo
Five years ago, a friend convinced me to start buying $250+ raw denim jeans
instead of $30 regular jeans (which would wear out every 6 months).

I thought it was crazy but he swore by them so I tried it. They were thick,
stiff and uncomfortable at first, but after a couple months had transformed
themselves into my favorite thing ever as they "wore in".

After a year of everyday wear they start developing holes. But they're far too
expensive to throw away, so first I took them to the local "denim surgeon",
but then realized I could learn to darn them myself.

I bought myself the cheapest Singer sewing machine, a darning attachment, and
specialty denim thread, and in the past 4 years have probably darned 30 holes
across 3 pair, also reinforcing button holes and pocket edges. They look great
and unique and are completely "me". I have no doubt the jeans will last me for
another 10 years at least, and will turn out to have saved me money in the
long run (crazy!).

It's very satisfying to have things you care for, that aren't disposable, and
are worth the effort of maintaining. But really, the only clothing items for
men that seem to be constructed with enough quality in the first place to be
_worth_ maintaining are things like raw denim jeans, leather boots (e.g. Red
Wings) and quality leather jackets.

~~~
tomohawk
Speaking of sewing machines, while you can always get an inexpensive Brother,
sewing machines today have a lot of plastic gears and other parts that do not
last.

Some of the best and affordable machines out there are the Singer 301s, which
were made back in the 50s. They're bullet proof and repairable. You can do a
lot with a straight stitch machine, and a single use machine like that will
outperform any multi-stitch machine by a long way.

It's a shame that a lot of people come across these and think they're junk
because they're not computerized.

~~~
sitharus
I have two old sewing machines, I picked both up at the local refuse transfer
station. One is a 1920s Singer. It’s super basic, doesn’t even have a reverse,
but it’s bullet proof. It’s cast iron but a portable model, so it’s built in
to a carry case and weighs ‘only’ 20ish kg.

The second is a Toyota Jigline. It’s from the 70s and is mostly stainless
steel. It has multiple stitch patterns but the pattern selector has the only
plastic gear in the entire machine and it’s cracked. It still works fine but
I’ll have to replace it at some point. At least I can see and understand the
entire mechanism.

The Toyota was cheap but the Singer was around market price. The Toyota was
marked as not worked but with a liberal application of machine oil it came
free. There are plenty of guides online for fixing up machines.

~~~
hilbert42
> "One is a 1920s Singer. It’s super basic, doesn’t even have a reverse, but
> it’s bullet proof."

That goes for much earlier models too. Recently, during a factory clean-up, I
came across a Singer that predates yours by some 50 years—it was made in the
early 1870s—1874 to be precise—and it too was built out of cast iron and made
to last seemingly for ever (it was still quite functional).

Incidentally, you can tell the date of your Singer easily by by checking the
many Singer serial number databases on the Web. Here's a couple to start with:

[http://www.sewingshop.com/dateyourmachine.aspx](http://www.sewingshop.com/dateyourmachine.aspx)

[https://sewalot.com/dating_singer_sewing_machine_by_serial_n...](https://sewalot.com/dating_singer_sewing_machine_by_serial_number.htm)

------
nkozyra
The other side of the coin is seeing someone identify an "easy fix," have to
spend hours reading about it, buying tools to accomplish it and having to do
it several times and maybe never get it quite right.

I've seen this many times.

Sometimes the right answer is: get an expert to look at it. You don't need a
$2000 fridge, but you may need a $200 repair job to get it done fast and
right.

~~~
segmondy
Tools have an upfront cost, but they pay for themselves down the line. The
first time you start fixing things it might take longer, but as time goes on
you get better.

You can learn so much by reading repair manuals & books, watching youtube
videos, and being able to recognize patterns in other things you have
repaired.

Doing this will save you tens of thousands of dollars over the years. Furnace,
A/C, House appliances, Home repairs, Furnitures, Cars, computers, even clothes
& shoes...

~~~
askafriend
Spending that time on my career will net me more than worrying about or
learning about something so infrequent and boring as fridge repair.

A 20min job is 20mins often because it took hundreds - or in the case of
professionals, thousands - of hours of learning, practicing, and
experimenting.

Of course everyone’s utility function is different, but my free time is at a
heavy heavy premium. I’m happy to spend money where it gets me time in return.

~~~
segmondy
Other things outside of your career can teach you much and help you get better
in your career.

My growth today in IT has very little to do with IT, I'm taking much lessons
from other industries. Want to learn to build reliable systems, serious study
the airline industry, how do they build such reliable systems? Want to learn
how to troubleshoot and solve problems fast? How does your typical ER work?

There's much to learn from cross pollinating ideas from other fields. Most of
us in IT are not just lovers of computers, but just builders. We are lucky to
be born in this time in history, 100 yrs ago, we might be building cars or
other sort of mechanical devices.

~~~
askafriend
Sure but I choose my hobbies based on my interests.

I truly do not care about repairing fridges. Not even a little bit. Yes I’m an
engineer. Still don’t care. Don’t care about repairing my car either.

Some people feel so righteous about repair for some reason and it just doesn’t
make sense to me. Why would someone want to impose how they spend their time
on other people? If you enjoy it, that’s great keep doing it! Doesn’t mean I
have to spend my time that way.

I’m just going to get the thing fixed (even if it costs more money) and just
move on with my life.

To you point though, if I was really into something then I might be up for it!
But fridges? Low on my list.

~~~
dvdkon
I get your point, but have to say I interpreted your previous post as "why
would I do something that doesn't maximise profits?" I like messing with
electronical/mechanical devices of all kinds, so I'll try to repair most
things myself. If you dislike that kind of work, fine, but only caring about
money is going to rub many people up the wrong way.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> I interpreted your previous post as "why would I do something that doesn't
> maximise profits?"

And then people wonder why they are miserable.

------
joostdecock
It's not every day my worlds collide like this, so I'll plug
[https://freesewing.org/](https://freesewing.org/) for those of you who have
an interest in making clothes and are looking for a place to start that is a
good match for the hackernews crowd.

Full disclosure: I'm the freesewing maintainer

~~~
gpm
That's a cool site!

You might want to redirect [http://](http://) to [https://](https://) right
now if I type "freesewing.org" into my browser it heads to a "Apache2 Debian
Default Page".

~~~
joostdecock
Thanks for the heads-up, I had no idea. I'll fix it ASAP.

------
Mister_Snuggles
The article talks about clothing, but there's so much more that we've lost the
ability to fix.

A trick I picked up at my last job was to use Rubber Renue[0] (one bottle will
last virtually forever since you need so little) on the pickup rollers on
laser printers when they started having paper pickup problems. Works like a
charm, but that stuff is nasty. I also learned the delicate art of using a
screwdriver to scrape toner deposits off of the fuser. In both cases, these
are parts that are easily replaceable because the printers were designed to be
maintained, but tight budgets made repairing the parts necessary. Ironically,
the deposits on the fuser were due to budgets that necessitated buying cheap
knockoff toner.

I still use the Rubber Renue on my 12-year-old printer at home. My
girlfriend's reaction to my printer jamming was "It's time to buy a new
printer!", which horrified me because the problem is so minor and so easy to
fix. We do want a colour printer though, so I've been researching to find one
that's maintainable instead of disposable. So far the laser printers from the
usual suspects (Brother, HP) look like they haven't been affected by the same
disposable mentality that inkjet printers have.

[0] [https://www.mgchemicals.com/products/cleaning-products-
for-e...](https://www.mgchemicals.com/products/cleaning-products-for-
electronics/cleaners/specialty-cleaners/rubber-renue-408a-408b)

~~~
pergadad
For printers I've learned to look beyond the known brands. OKI seems to be
focused on the professional market but has some very great value home
printers. Big & clunky but can do a lot and look very solid.

~~~
Mister_Snuggles
OKI showed up during my research, but I didn't mention them since they're a
relative unknown to me. They have some printers that tick all the boxes
though, so they're certainly in the running.

------
lazyjones
I'm old enough to know how to mend, but surely even younger people could just
watch one of countless Youtube tutorials if they suddenly decided they'd like
to learn this? Knowledge is more accessible than ever before, nowadays we just
"know where to look" whereas previous generations knew what they were taught
(or, sometimes, learnt from books).

The real issue seems to be that people are helpless without the Internet - and
that our consumerism has brought a throwaway mentality with it.

~~~
IshKebab
You're right that YouTube has a lot of helpful videos for repair / disassembly
that make it a lot easier than it used to be. I don't know why "being helpless
without the internet" would be "the real problem" though, given that we ...
have the internet..?

The _real_ problem is that today's technology is generally much more
complicated than it used to be. Also manufacturers don't expect things to be
repaired (because it isn't cost effective unless you do it yourself) so they
don't make things easy to disassemble.

~~~
jdietrich
_> The real problem is that today's technology is generally much more
complicated than it used to be._

I broadly disagree - the proportion of people who can fix a TV is probably no
lower now than it was in the 1970s; a modern TV might be more complex, but the
accessibility of information, tools and parts is far better.

The wider issue is the broadly positive fact that automation has drastically
reduced the cost of goods relative to labour. The range of products and
failure modes that are economically repairable is much narrower, because
repair is relatively more expensive and replacement is relatively cheaper.
Generally speaking, the most expensive part of repairing a TV is simply the
labour cost of dismantling and reassembling it. As mentioned in the article,
paying a seamstress to patch a jacket or darn a sweater is often more
expensive than just buying a new one. There are worse problems in the world
than "we've got so good at making stuff cheaply that it isn't worth the effort
to fix it".

~~~
egypturnash
Modern flat screens are much more likely to be glued together in ways that
make it nearly impossible to repair them, too.

~~~
mdorazio
Exactly. Had part of the bottom LED backlighting strip go bad on a monitor
recently. I'm no stranger to electronics work, but repairing it proved
impossible due to the way the monitor was manufactured, even if I had been
able to source proper replacements. Compare that to old CRTs I used to repair
in high school by swapping out parts you could often find at radio shack and
get to with just a screwdriver.

~~~
DanBC
Much higher risk of death with a CRT though.

~~~
mdorazio
True, but not too much higher if you're careful to ground out the HV circuitry
before you touch anything. It's also not nearly as high a risk as people tend
to think [1].

[1] [http://lowendmac.com/2007/the-truth-about-crts-and-shock-
dan...](http://lowendmac.com/2007/the-truth-about-crts-and-shock-danger/)

------
specialp
I have a good paying job, yet I 100% will pick up major appliances or lawn
mowers from the garbage if they are somewhat recent with no shame. It is very
rare that they have some issue that is worth discarding over. I get tons of
junk mail and behind a doctor's office they threw out a $1700 heavy duty paper
shredder. It turned out to be a dead hall field sensor to detect when it jams.
$25 from fellowes.

~~~
tartoran
That's cool but watch out for hoarding. While I agree with picking up
discarded fixable or like new appliances, there are so many of them out there
that one may end up hoarding.

~~~
syntheticnature
My wife learned that youth shelters/foster parenting agencies need suitcases
to help the children move their clothing and stuff around. The usual
alternative children get: garbage bags.

We collected up suitcases off the curb that in theory need minor mending (no
smells, certain problems left behind), and over time the backlog has built up.
Time is also an ingredient, here; in the best case it takes fifteen minutes to
prep a curb suitcase, in the worst (cleaning stains, etc.) the suitcase might
need to sit around in a ventilated area for days over the course of treatment.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Do you never wonder about stuff like bed bugs when you pick up stuff like
suitcases off the street? I feel like I'm overly paranoid about that.

~~~
SECProto
Have a friend who had a habit of picking up furniture etc from the side of the
road, and (perhaps related) got bedbugs. I am very very hesitant to do the
same.

~~~
syntheticnature
Even I would hesitate to pick up upholstered furniture from the side of the
road.

~~~
SECProto
Definitely, but I would use a similar amount of caution with used luggage.
Luggage is used for visiting many places, left in hotel rooms and overhead
bins (high traffic areas), hold clothes, lots of seams and nooks and crannies
... pretty ideal bedbug territory.

------
system2
When I was studying, I used to turn my round neck shirts into V neck by
cutting the middle and stitching. Just for fun and it thought me how to
stitch, at least to a point.

Today it is not about knowing, it is about time. I can't spend 30 minutes
fixing my clothes because my 30 minutes is more valuable than a tshirt's cost.
Or I don't want to deal with ordering glue for my shoe and work on fixing it,
I take it to a shoe repair and get it fixed for $10.

Things got more convenient than war times. We don't need to turn potato sack
burlap into clothing anymore. Although, I also believe a man should know how
to stitch a button if they need to. I want people to repair electronics rather
than clothing.

~~~
charliesome
>I can't spend 30 minutes fixing my clothes because my 30 minutes is more
valuable than a tshirt's cost.

I think it's a mistake that we value our own time like this. There's
satisfaction that can be derived from spending time mending some of your own
clothing, and that contributes to wellbeing. That wellbeing is not something
that you can put a dollar value on.

~~~
laumars
Platitudes like that often don't work out in practice. Take my life for
example; what do you suggest I substitute in return for time spent mending
clothes?

* Time spent with the family / kids? That contributes far more to my wellbeing (and theirs). Sure I could mend my clothes with the kids but that isn't something they'd enjoy (nor me to be quite honest) and there are already enough chores I make them do as a family.

* How about time spent cooking and cleaning? But unfortunately I already pay different people to wash the windows, clean the house, mow the lawn... there isn't much less responsibility I can hand off there.

* I guess I could spend less time tinkering with my own hobby projects - but that amounts to very few hours a week and given it's my own personal time, I think I should do what I find more rewarding and relaxing and that isn't mending old clothes.

I barely get time in the week to do fun things as it is. I mean stuff like
going on bike rides with my eldest son (who's 5) and I certainly don't get any
time to look after my own personal health (I used to run 5k several times a
week - it's not much but it made a difference. These days I'm lucky if I get
one 5k run in a week). So if I can outsource stuff I don't enjoy to someone
else for a reasonable fee then my time is most certainly worth it.

~~~
varjag
Time on social media? That's what we adults _really_ do most of the time
anyway.

~~~
laumars
Speak for yourself. I'm rarely on Facebook, don't do Twitter / Reddit /
Instagram / whatever else. HN is my one social media vice and even that isn't
something I generally visit on a weekend (usually just during the week if I
need to take a mental break from coding). However today is the exception but
my family are out of town and I'm in bed with a head cold so don't feel much
up to being productive anyway.

This is also true for most adults I'm friends with - in that a couple might
occasionally go on Facebook but most of them aren't heavy users of social
media.

For context: on average we're late 30s and most of us have young kids. We
didn't grow up with social media and we've have better things to fill our
adult time with since social media become a "thing". So it's not something we
spend a great amount of time on.

I'm sure yours (and a many other peoples) experience will differ but my point
is you shouldn't generalise that adults spend a lot of time on social media
because that isn't always true.

~~~
varjag
Well I'm 41 and have kids, so your age card is poorly played. Most people of
my generation spend their life on social media, I know that for a fact.

Speaking of the milage, I took the liberty to glance at your HN account stats.
You appear to be a more prolific poster than I am, even though my account is
couple years older.

Not judging mind you. I have my hobbies too, including a nice metalworking
shop. But the proportion of time I stand at the lathe to me watching YouTube
videos of people machining is tiny.

People in 21st century first world have a lot of disposable time. They also
complain most about lack of it.

~~~
laumars
> _Well I 'm 41 and have kids, so your age card is poorly played. Most people
> of my generation spend their life on social media, I know that for a fact._

I wasn't playing an "age card" \- I was adding context to why I don't use
social media. Also I think you missed the part where I said:

 _I 'm sure yours (and a many other peoples) experience will differ but my
point is you shouldn't generalise that adults spend a lot of time on social
media because that isn't always true._

> _Speaking of the milage, I took the liberty to glance at your HN account
> stats. You appear to be a more prolific poster than I am, even though my
> account is couple years older._

I'd already addressed that point in my post: Yes I do spend a lot of time on
HN. But only 5 minutes here and there during the week when I need a proverbial
cigarette break. I don't generally use HN during the weekend. The fact I post
a lot is really more a symptom of how opinionated I am rather than how much
time I spend on HN.

> People in 21st century first world have a lot of disposable time. They also
> complain most about lack of it.

You cannot generalise like that. Some people need to work multiple jobs just
to keep their family fed and housed. Others - like me - have long commutes and
busy homes to manage. You want to know my weekly schedule?

    
    
        06:00 get up and showered for work
        06:45 drive to train station
        07:00 catch train
        08:15 arrive in office
        16:15 leave for the evening
        18:45 get home, bath kids, read them a story then put them to bed
        20:00 do house work
        20:30 cook dinner
        21:00 eat while chatting to wife or watching some crap on TV
        21:30 down time
        22:00 bed
    

Granted that 30 minute downtime can be longer and shorter some days depending
on how late I go to bed or how much housework we need to do. But I still
wouldn't call that "lots of disposable time". The train to work is my
disposable time and that's limited by what I can do on the train - which is
usually sleeping because my youngest still wakes up _multiple times_ a night
(aghhh!)

I wouldn't say I'm unique either nor that I don't have a lucky life (I have a
family who love me, a good job, nice house in a good area and enough
disposable income to afford a few luxuries). However I don't take kindly to
people who assume that I have lots of disposable time. My kids or catching up
on sleep is my disposable time and I get very little left after that.

So I suggest you don't make assumptions about other peoples lifestyles based
off your own. It's a diverse world out there ;)

~~~
grkvlt
You could move closer to where you work, so you have a 15 minute bike ride to
and from there every day, saving you two and a half hours. Use that time to
mend things so that you save money, which you can use to pay for the more
expensive house! Problem solved, you can thank me later...

~~~
laumars
I had decided I wasn't going to entertain this conversation anymore (on
scarejunba's advice) but you do raise a good point there and that is something
my wife and I have considered.

The problem is that would mean we'd either end up in a less desirable area
(less greenery, higher crime rates, etc) or have much less disposable income.
The closer you move towards London the sharper the rise in house prices - and
it's quite significant too. Plus as I'm just 10 minutes drive from a direct
fast line into central London so moving closer wouldn't actually save myself
_that_ much in commute time (maybe half an hour each way if I'm lucky). So
there just isn't the intensive to do so.

In fact my wife and I actually did the maths and the money we'd save on my
season ticket (which is very expensive) wouldn't even come remotely close to
the increased cost in housing. So spending that extra hour mending things
wouldn't even scratch the surface. And to be honest, I quite like having that
hour of relaxation time on the train ride home as it's uninterrupted me time -
which means by the time I get home I've recharged my own proverbial batteries
a little so are more energized with the kids. So the time with them is of a
better quality.

I'm not suggesting this would work for everyone but there's a few other guys
in my office that have the same routine and find it works for them too. In
fact it's quite common for people who work in London to live a county or two
away from the city and thus have long commutes.

Maybe when the kids are older and want to live in more urban areas, my wife
and I might reconsider living this far out from the city. But personally I
quite like the contrast of quiet village life after spending the day in the
noisy capital.

~~~
grkvlt
Understood - I wasn't really serious! However, when I worked in the City back
in the late nineties/early two thousands I lived in Islington (20ish minute
walk, one stop on the tube) first, and then EC1 (10 minutes or less walking)
and although you're right about paying more, as a contractor for a bank, it
was still affordable. Plus, I never needed a season ticket, I could pop home
for lunch, and it was an interesting area (near Hoxton, Shoreditch, and so on)
to live. Admittedly I was much younger and not married, which would definitely
change your priorities...

------
breatheoften
I recently bought a new backpack — it was a supposedly nice name brand
backpack and pricey — 300 dollars or so. I didn’t like it — it’s dofficult to
pack for the loads I carry and just very far from my optimal design.

I randomly came across a backpack in a used gear store in the mountains in
Colorado, being sold on consignment — it was ancient, clearly a bag that had
seen a lot of use with several patches. It’s a huge u-zip backpack with
quality padding, good hip/chest straps, three (useful!) fully exterior zip
pockets — two clearly well suited for water/coffee, and nothing dangly.
Intrigued by this packs design, so different from all the clone backpacking
bags on the market now - I bought it used for 20 dollars. This is the best
backpack I’ve ever owned! I use it as a rock climbing day pack and for longer
trips with air travel - I can fit everything I need in it for multi month
climbing trips to Europe.

But it’s clearly very old. I packed too much weight into it and accidentally
tried to pick it up once while accidentally standing on the hip strap —
putting an enormous strain on the shoulder strap — which broke. This made for
an unpleasant train journey in Wales until I arrived at my destination but
fortunately I wasn’t too far off. And also fortunately would be staying there
for several months so didn’t really need the bag for awhile.

During that time I went on a long fruitless search across the internet and
brick and mortar stores to find a replacement. I searched everywhere and could
not find a backpack that offered even a quarter of the joy I get from this old
packs design ...

Fortunately — it turns out that mending expertise still exists in some part of
the world and smallish town Wales is one such place. A friend suggested I
check out a tailor to see if they could fix my broken backpack strap. Long
story short — 13 pounds later — they did it!! I also asked them to reinforce
the other strap.

Result: I couldn’t be happier. The love and admiration I now have for this
tailor is substantial. Fixing things is still possible — and fixing that are
worth fixing is enormously valuable. Honestly I feel guilty to only have paid
13 pounds for the work of that expert seamstress - in the future I would pay
300 dollars to keep this bag going if I could rather than buying a new bag
that is not fit for purpose from day one ...

~~~
ghaff
I've had very good luck with cobblers for fixing hiking and camping gear. They
have all the heavy needles and so forth needed to do repairs of thick
materials. (And I suspect most are not completely overwhelmed with work.)

There are also specialty places that do outdoor equipment repair. Rainy Pass
in Seattle was a name given to me for a backpack zipper repair but a friend
ended up doing it for me.

~~~
Declanomous
The nice thing about outdoor gear is that the repairs don't have to be very
aesthetic. I repair my own camping gear using my grandmother's old signer
sewing machine. It's maybe 100 years old, but unlike modern sewing machines,
the frame is cast iron and it can push a thick needle through almost anything.

It can't do the fancy embroidery stitches, but with some chalk, a seam ripper,
and some thread you can repair almost anything. I had an old jacket where the
outer shell was more empty space than fabric, and I was able to disassemble
the coat, trace the pieces that needed to be assembled onto new fabric, and
reassemble it again.

The argument that "it isn't worth my time to repair stuff" always grates on
me. It makes sense to a certain extent, but there is a lot more to life than
pure economic efficiency.

------
_Microft
The teeth of a zipper on my backpack came detached from the tape material on
the side of the zipper and a friend said that it looks like I would have to
get a new backpack.

Well... it turned out that the teeth of the zipper are just a plastic string
wrapped around a cord (and both still perfectly fine) and that stitching the
cord back onto the tape material required not much more than some dexterity
and accuracy. It took maybe half an hour from diagnose to the finished fixed
zipper.

Bonus: feels empowering to do things that someone else considered impossible.

~~~
ghaff
I had a zipper go recently in a way where the whole zipper did need replaced.
I was annoyed to learn that at least my local REIs don't do repairs any longer
like they did in the past. I'd have sent it out for repair to a company that
specializes in outdoor gear repair but a friend of mine was able to do it for
me. (I don't have a sewing machine myself and this really needed one.)

~~~
mdorazio
FYI in the future there might be a "luggage repair" place in your area that
could do this work for you. Had the same thing happen to a backpack I really
like and paid $50 to get the zipper replaced and a couple seams reinforced
instead of buying a new one.

~~~
ghaff
Never thought of that and I've even had luggage repaired. As I said in another
comment, a cobbler could probably have done it as well though I'd probably
have had to order the zipper myself in that case.

I think with outdoor gear, there's actually a certain cachet to gear that's
obviously well-used and battle-scarred :-)

------
titanix2
During undergrad studies I used to wear a jacket with a cross-stitched logo
from a game I was playing at the time. It was unbelievable how everyone
assumed that it was my mother’s doing. What bothered me was not the thing
about the gender stereotype but the fact that putting a string in a needle and
using it seems so hard for anyone from teenagers to grown up adult. Sometimes
the barriers are just in the mind.

------
krob
We haven't lost our ability to mend. What has happened is people used to rely
on material way back in the past to teach them how to mend. Today our products
are constantly being upgraded / changes in real time. Those tutorials are
often for specific types of products and those products now have radically
different electronics and people when they see different products don't
understand that the patterns in designing them are functionally identical. The
circuit boards on the other hand might be slightly different. Long story
short, if you want your stuff to last longer, stop buying into features, buy
simple stuff. Simple works longer because it has less things to break. When
the simple stuff does break, it's easier to figure out how to fix it.

Also I used to have DIY books which would have diagrams to help you fix
things. Today all of those diagrams are worthless. Nobody has a rotary
telephone anymore. No one has washing machines without circuit boards anymore.
Even toilets have different flushing mechanisms, and if you don't know which
one you have, you get worried you can't replace the original. Repairing VCR --
give me a break -- or a TV? I think the mending culture needs to start
teaching people how electronics work, and then people will start to see the
errors of their ways.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
> _What has happened is people used to rely on material way back in the past
> to teach them how to mend. Today our products are constantly being upgraded
> / changes in real time._

When I was a kid, my Dad and I rebuilt a 1945 Ford 9N tractor from the ground
up, including a complete engine teardown. Pistons, rings, valves, carburetor,
distributor, points, plugs, the whole shebang. He'd undertaken a similar
project in the 70s with his father, and it had served him well, allowing him
to do his own maintenance on his used cars, keeping his TCO extremely low.
They never had to worry about a car payment, and considered a lease to be for
suckers.

Now, though, my car is somewhat more reliable but also hugely more complex.
When something goes wrong, I don't need to remove a casting and clean some
passage, I need my oscilloscope and some eBay spelunking for the dealer's
computer manual.

It used to be reasonable for a home mechanic to be able to keep up with trends
in auto manufacturing and be competent at every task they needed to do. Now
I'm not sure a professional can keep up, without specializing.

Likewise, I'm an EE, and could probably repair a VCR -certainly done a few
stereo recievers in my day. But when my dad (as mentioned above, of the repair
mindset) sent me a picture of the PCB from a $30 kitchen appliance, showing an
epoxied flip-chip controller and LCD zebra connector, I walked him through
checking the batteries and that was reasonably all we could do to fix it.
Knowing how to do electronics manufacturing profitably at scale is at cross
paths with repairing those electronics.

~~~
whatshisface
> _Now I 'm not sure a professional can keep up, without specializing._

Professionals get maintenance manuals from manufacturers. They tell them how
to unmount the broken part, and then say "OK, now buy a new one." No
oscilloscopes involved.

------
FailMore
Today, all things are too cheap. We need include the cost on the environment
within the cost of our goods. Altering the price of goods is an extremely
important mechanic to move us towards sustainability. It is ok for us to have
fast fashion if it can be done in a non damaging way, if it cannot then we
will have to learn to mend again.

~~~
specialist
re: environmentalism & "fast fashion"

There's an opportunity in there somewhere.

What if clothing were made to order locally?

I've been pitching the idea to any one who will listen. Many makerspaces
already have stuff for textiles. Kids these are really into cosplay, crafts,
homemade. Outside of a few STEM hubs, there's excess warehouse space AND
untapped labor.

Etc.

The pendulum swings back.

~~~
Falkon1313
While a child labor force sweating away over textiles in a rundown warehouse
may be a classic business model, it could be a difficult idea to pitch
nowadays.

------
Dowwie
I bought a used three-zone Weber Summit-series barbecue for a really good
price. It was well-used. Many of the screws keeping it together were corroded
and falling apart. There were a couple of holes in the main cooking box. I
repaired and restored the entire grill to a very workable condition with the
help of Weber, who sells replacement parts and offers great customer support.
Unfortunately, I don't weld, so my solution to patching holes involved
washers, nuts, screws, and custom cut sheet metal.

Restoring this grill required a few hours of labor and lots of patience. The
grill retails for a few thousand dollars. I bought it for less than 10%
retail, used and requiring repair. The parts cost less than 100.

Many of us value our personal time in a way that rationalizes avoiding a
project such as this. However, the cost savings and value created by this
project were sufficient to justify the effort.

I like to consider this strategic mending..

~~~
lscotte
I know someone who picked up a stainless gas BBQ free from the curb in front
of someone's house. It was in great condition, the burners and grills looked
like it had hardly been used. New, it would have been in the $1000-2000 range.
What was wrong with it? All it needed was a new AA battery for the ignitor!

~~~
Mister_Snuggles
My experience with gas BBQs is that the ignitor is usually the first thing to
go. Usually, again in my experience, it happens due to corrosion of the
ignitor itself. My solution is usually just to use a match, I find that the
ignitor stops working so quickly that it's not worth replacing.

Replacing the grills, heat spreader, and burners however makes a lot of sense
and can make an old BBQ virtually new again.

------
AnIdiotOnTheNet
It's weird. We live in an age where many of us carry a device in our pockets
capable of searching a vast store of human knowledge and presenting results to
us nigh-instantaneously. If I have a problem with anything, even if I have no
idea how it works, I can usually acquire enough knowledge about it under an
hour to diagnose and repair it or at least determine that that I'm not going
to be able to do that.

I don't know, maybe I just came from a different background. Hacker by nature,
grew up poor enough that fixing things was how it was done, have a genetic
predisposition against waste, whatever.

~~~
elorant
You have to have a certain mentality to go down this path. Most people don't
like messing with things and getting their hands dirty, even it costs them a
fortune to replace a device. It's not because they're stupid. They rather
think that it's too complicated to try anything and they're afraid they might
make things even worse than they already are. Also, quite often they don't
have the necessary tools and buying them and learning to use them is a task on
its own.

One other thing that strikes me as odd is that most people aren't curious to
learn how their everyday devices work. As long as it works it's fine by them.
I from the other hand need to know even how the toilette flush works because I
find the learning process fascinating.

I guess it all boils down to how curious one is.

~~~
isoskeles
> they're afraid they might make things even worse than they already are

I get this, but I also think that if you're willing to spend $2000 to replace
a refrigerator, per the example, it's not like you can make the situation much
worst.

I suppose they might think that they can harm themselves in the process,
that's possible. Personally, I might only be okay with futzing around with a
refrigerator because I've done it with other (smaller, seemingly less harmful)
things in the past.

~~~
elorant
I think they make the correlation between cost and complication, thus assuming
that it will be too much of a trouble to fix it. Let's not forget that we live
in an era where free time becomes a luxury. Someone may think that spending
20-30 hours to learn a few things about a refrigerator and locating the
problem might be a waste of precious time. If you don't have an intrinsic
curiosity on how things work then fixing broken devices might seem like too
much of a trouble without any clear benefits.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Sure, if it really was going to take 30 hours, but that's why we have repair
men.

------
mrob
If you wear belts, you might decide you don't need to repair the button
because the belt hides it, and duplicates its function of holding the pants
up. This will eventually result in the zipper breaking, which cannot be hidden
with a belt, and is much more difficult to repair. The button has the
additional non-obvious function of reducing load on the zipper, so you should
repair it even if it looks unnecessary.

------
dvfjsdhgfv
It's not about not being able to mend at all, these things are fairly easy to
do (or to learn).

It's unthinkable anyone would come to work in mended clothes. They would be
concerned everyone thinks they're poor and can't afford buying new clothes. As
long as there is this social stigma, and clothing brands interest in people
buying new pieces of clothing continuously, we can forget about mending.

~~~
smadge
The article includes a picture of Prince Charles wearing a mended jacket. If
it’s acceptable for royalty to appear in public in mended clothing I imagine
it’s ok for us plebeians.

~~~
arkano
It's usually the opposite; people of status / power are allowed to ignore
norms that plague the more common folk.

~~~
taneq
And then six weeks later it's fashionable to have a small patch somewhere
prominently placed on your jacket.

------
baybal2
> The two biggest blows came in the 1990s. The first was the shift in the US
> economy from manufacturing to knowledge-intensive services (a shift that has
> been in the making for a long time, but came to a head during the
> information technology revolution).

People call it "knowledge based economy," but one of my previous bosses had
that phrase about it _" it feels more like it is an ignorance based economy"_

And yes, the service economy is there to accommodate living of very one sided
people, in regards to both work and life skills.

The amount of money spent in service economy is seemingly directly
proportional to at what cost intellectual ineptness comes to money earning
classes of society: branding consulting, financial consulting, management
consulting, "change management" \- really all that stuff is available to any
able minded person if he can give 5 minutes of serious thought to that. I do
believe that most of HN readers have hard time understanding people buying
into that stuff too.

I wonder, if I would've been a multibillionaire, would I be also paying
millions to random consultants to do 2+2 things for me?

------
GuB-42
> No girl graduated high school without knowing how to bake, budget, and sew,
> while her male counterpart took classes in autoshop and woodworking

> This all changed in the 1960s. For good reasons, second-wave feminists
> fought back against the rigid gender stereotypes of the previous decade and
> felt that mandatory home economic classes were pushing women into the
> confinement of housewifery

I understand the idea but no, it is not good. Women used to know how to cook
and mend clothes while men knew how to fix cars and furniture. It meant that
households could do all that. The man/woman distinction was kind of arbitrary
but it resulted in useful complementary skills.

Gender roles are officially a thing of the past now, but the way we did it is
by reducing to the least common denominator. Women don't learn how to sew and
men don't learn how to woodwork, and no one knows how to budget. Instead of
removing these classes, why provide them to both boys and girls instead, maybe
in a modernized form?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Women used to know cook and mend clothes while men knew how to fix cars and
> furniture. It meant that households could do all that.

No, it didn't.

One, because while it may have been required for graduation from high school
(most of the described material was not, in most places, anyway, though it was
traditional and common, and, even where it was required at one point, it
remained traditional and common decades beyond the 1960s), graduation rates
have always been substantially below 100% (especially before the change in the
1960s), and second because not all households, even in and before the 1960s,
consisted of at least one adult of each gender.

The only way to assure that _households_ have a particular combination of
skills is to assure that individuals, regardless of gender, have that
combination of skills.

> Gender roles are officially a thing of the past now, but the way we did it
> is by reducing to the least common denominator.

No, we didn't; there is a lot more required in high school today than there
was in the 1960s; shop and home ec became less common _not_ because gender
roles weakened (that just made both more gender mixed, _especially_ the
traditionally male classes), but because they were displaced as academic core
requirements got more involved.

> Instead of removing these classes, why provide them to both boys and girls
> instead, maybe in a modernized form?

The reason is because they are capital intensive, liability intensive, there's
less interest in them if offered as electives because the relative economic
value of the skills and the relative social status of practitioners of them
has declined, and there's no room without displacing something seen as more
valuable to fit them in as universal requirements.

~~~
zaroth
Households on average certainly seem to outsource more and be capable of less
of the core “upkeep” tasks than in the past. Whether it’s cooking, cleaning,
laundry, plumbing, electrical, auto, etc.

We absolutely lose out on these skills in aggregate, by pulling them from the
curriculum, and it’s also not obvious at all that there is less overal
economic value to providing some hands-on tradecraft skills (which often
require critical thinking and creative problem solving) versus another
theoretical academic course.

The amount of money an average household can save through doing their own home
maintenance and upkeep is substantial, and the opportunity cost is not as high
as you might think. These activities often have positive externalities (the
additional learning that takes place while doing them, or the opportunity of
doing them with the kids), not to mention emotional payback. And the cost of
outsourcing these jobs is almost always not tax-deductible, making the true
cost of outsourcing nearly double the sticker price.

~~~
pas
Of course the problem is that at face value those academic classes seem more
interesting, seem to have better ROI-for-life, and obviously you are quite
right that a lot of people would be better off were they able to do basic
upkeep, budgeting, woodwork, plumbing, wiring a socket, or simply knowing how
to paint a room, and also you are correct that sometimes these activities lead
to insights into problem solving, and some addition to critical thinking
skills.

But in reality most of school is about developing interpersonal skills and
having time to do whatever really interests you, and teaching applied
rationality is hard, and only occasional in every class, be it DIY, physics,
debate club, or free form project.

------
ajuc
I had sewing lessons in primary school in early 90s in Poland. It was
compulsory, on "practical technics" lessons. Other subjects covered were:
reading 3d schemas, making some wooden toys, basic electric projects (make
engine turn both ways with switches), making pancakes, making christmas tree
decorations, such stuff. It lasted for 2 years and was pretty fun. The worst
thing was learning "technical script" where every letter had to be perfectly
written on a milimeter grid. I never understood the point of it, but the rest
was pretty useful.

I was awful at it, but I learnt how to do it and I (badly) sewed a lot of
things through my life. Mostly buttons :)

------
rwl
In this context, it seems worth mentioning Woolfiller, a product I love
because I always wear out the elbows in my wool sweaters and it lets me mend
them: [https://www.woolfiller.com/](https://www.woolfiller.com/) It's a great
example of a company trying to reverse this trend.

I recently ordered a new kit from them, and learned that they are working on a
new project to produce a more mendable fabric:
[https://madetomend.com/](https://madetomend.com/) I can't wait until I can
buy a jacket from them and try it out.

------
tomohawk
"... to legitimize the housework that women were already performing ..."

Yeesh! Is there really something 'illegitimate' about housework? Such a
ridiculous tone. All work is important and should be done well and with pride.
A person is not less than or "in a ghetto" if their contribution to a family
is taking care of most of the housework.

I'm a guy and I remember taking Home Ec and Shop, and then those being phased
out. All students were expected to take both, and I remember learning a lot
there. I suppose its much more important to learn about "Catcher in the Rye".

~~~
allenu
I don't think the author was implying a value judgment here but stating that
the introduction of Home Ec was to help legitimize women's home duties in the
eyes of students who may have looked down on them as "not real work".

------
swayvil
We don't cook, clean, grow our food, educate our children or walk our fat
butts to the store either.

Our whole life is optimized for maximum working. Everything else is flensed
away.

------
zoom6628
I grew up in NZ where the attitude is one should at least try to do most
everything. Every guy needs to learn how to knit, sew, fix a car, grow
veggies, cook a meal, and fix/decorate a house. These are so staple one is
almost considered less-manly for not having tried to do all of them. One can
fail miserably and turn to professionals but no lose of face for saying so.

Decades later I have lived in China 20 years and Hongkong and I still take the
attitude of fix before replace. Clothing, shoes, electrical gear,
showers....often to the amusement of partner ("you can do that?!") or "that
won't work"(and years later is still working).

What ALL kids need to be taught in school is basic principles and skills for
repairing things. Its fun, builds new skills, maybe gives them a hobby, and
creates more rounded people for the future with more environmentally friendly
attitude to possessions.

~~~
learc83
I mentioned to a European friend once that I was planning on building a new
coffee table over the weekend. He laughed and commented on how _American_ that
was.

Maybe it's something to do with countries that were more recently considered
frontiers.

------
aeharding
I got a late '70s blue Singer 20U recently for parachute rigging. But I've
become interested in sewing and repairing other things (like work bags) more
recently. It's fun to learn. These old sewing machines are amazingly easy to
repair and adjust. The manuals are wonderful, too!

It's my prized possession. It will definitely outlive me.

------
FooHentai
About 5 years ago I got very anxious about how specialized I had become. Sure,
advancing a career for better pay is great, but it was becoming apparent that
a lot would be lost paying other people premium rates to do things I couldn't.
So, I've had five years of focus on building my personal capabilities. Or
another way to look at it is that I've embarked on the standard middle-class
mid-life DIY frenzy. Either way, it struck me recently how much my mindset has
shifted:

\- We want/need a kitchen island - So instead of going out to buy one we found
someone that wanted rid of an old table and are in the process of resizing,
adding shelving, wheels, and re-finishing.

\- The vacuum broke, so instead of throwing it away I tore it down and fault-
found until it worked again.

\- The car gets as much maintenance from me as possible before I call the
shop.

Today, unlike before, I first considering how much self-help is possible
before seeking external assistance/inputs. There's far less anxiety about
capability and being able to respond to changing situations. The only down-
side is the need to maintain some true down-time, as all the DIY stuff eats
into that (it's still, ultimately, work and not relaxation).

------
robohoe
I was just talking to my wife about this yesterday. My gloves wore out on the
index fingers and I had to mend them with a needle and thread. Literally 5
minutes of work and gloves are good to go. I then commented on how as
Americans lost our way with mending old things and she said why I just didn’t
buy new ones. I wonder how future generations will fare while having grown up
with disposable material things.

------
pkamb
Easily my favorite blog/follow of the last couple years is this guy in
Montreal who posts all the quality old junk that people throw away:

[https://garbagefinds.com/](https://garbagefinds.com/)
[https://www.instagram.com/garbagefinds](https://www.instagram.com/garbagefinds)

------
lainga
Well, it's cliched, but since nobody has mentioned it:

 _" But old clothes are beastly," continued the untiring whisper. "We always
throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than
mending, ending is better …"_

 _" Government's an affair of sitting, not hitting. You rule with the brains
and the buttocks, never with the fists. For example, there was the
conscription of consumption."_

 _" There, I'm ready," said Lenina, but Fanny remained speechless and averted.
"Let's make peace, Fanny darling."_

 _" Every man, woman and child compelled to consume so much a year. In the
interests of industry. The sole result …"_

 _" Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches; the
more stitches …"_

------
mrhappyunhappy
So odd how not even a few hours ago my wife went through my closet and made me
throw away old clothes. I had this jacket I’ve worn over 10 years that to me
still looked nice, but she insisted it looked worn. The jacket had sentimental
value to just from all the places I wore it and the memories I had with it.
This wasn’t the first time she made me part with an item dear to me. I had a
Hollister t-shirt I wore as a teen - the same one the day we met. Some 18
years later the shirt was still in my closet, ripped and washed out,
practically a rag but it had so much sentimental value that I thought about
keeping it forever. Nope, she insisted it be gone. This article made me think
about my shirt and my jacket. I know they are just items but I’m not sure if
I’ll ever get over losing them.

------
bluedino
There are opportunities in recycled parts or junkyards for consumer devices.
You can pick up a “broken” appliance on the side of the road and test the
individual parts and sell them online to people who are looking to repair
their own devices.

------
Wowfunhappy
It's a real shame "Home Economics" education has been inherently linked to
outdated gender roles in the public consciousness.

As a guy, it would be nice if a class in high school had forced me to learn to
sow. Teach it to people of all genders.

~~~
will_pseudonym
Just a friendly FYI, "sow" means to plant a seed, or an adult female pig/other
animals (pronounced like "now"). "Sew" means to "join, fasten, or repair
(something) by making stitches with a needle and thread or a sewing machine."

~~~
ghaff
No that a little bit of gardening would be a bad idea either :-)

There are tradeoffs certainly but I've come to believe that high school should
have a track that covers, for lack of a better term, "adulting." Cooking,
sewing, shop, personal finance, statistics, etc. And most of those can be
mixed in with more academic subjects. I've done machine shop stuff at research
universities and I've taken a Harvard MOOC on food science.

~~~
will_pseudonym
I definitely agree. I learned how to sew as a kid for example from my mom, but
I sort of dropped it after I realized it wasn't "something that boys do" at
the time. All of those functional skills would be so much more useful than a
lot of things I was taught in school. There are "adulting" classes now that
demonstrate the obvious gap in our education system. [0]

Fortunately, the generation that was born with YouTube will be a lot better
off, because the amount of things you can learn to do from watching YouTube
videos by experienced people is astounding.

[0] [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/adulting-classes-teach-
millenni...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/adulting-classes-teach-millennials-
basic-skills-like-sewing-cooking-and-how-to-deal-with-relationships/)

------
itronitron
There isn't a need to mend when clothes are as inexpensive as they are.
Especially for children's clothes as they outgrow them before they need
mending and it's easier to buy new clothes than find what you need second
hand.

~~~
tokai
People in poorer parts of the world are literally dying, so we can buy clothes
so cheap.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_industry_in_Bangladesh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_industry_in_Bangladesh#Working_conditions)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Savar_building_collapse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Savar_building_collapse)

~~~
hopler
If we paid more, would the factory owners have built a safer factory? No,
they'd pocket the profits. If they didn't have factory jobs, would they be
subsisting on coastal fishing and be killed by tsunami?

Poorer parts of the world are poor by default, not because of trade.

------
Sutanreyu
Somewhat ironic this comes in a day after I sewed a hole in the armpit of a
tee shirt I like. Doesn't really vibe with the target audience of a site like
'Hacker News'...

~~~
gtrfreewifi
Hacking essentially means the exact opposite of buying and throwing away stuff
(a cycle known as consumerism i.e. being a sheeple). Fixing and modifying all
kind of things to suit your weird imagination is the core idea of hacking. The
skill of mending applies to software too, of course.

------
lmilcin
I grew up on a farm in a communist country.

I still feel my life was much more interesting back then. We were poor but,
paradoxically, we ate better than I eat now. The tasks had much more variety
to them, there was a lot of interesting stuff happening every day and
requiring your attention. There was new thing to be done/fixed all the time
and I would never get bored. We would be doing everything for ourselves no
matter how unskilled we were in the task, you had to figure it out while you
were doing it. There was plenty of variety between seasons and there was
plenty of free time to spend with the family.

I like my current job and it pays very well but I feel my daytime consists of
only work and entertainment. There is almost no variety to it and during 3-4
weeks of vacation I have annually I feel like I have no idea what to do with
the time to truly recharge my batteries.

~~~
virgilp
There is a joke popular in communist countries:

> Two old men are talking. "Ah, life was so much better during Stalin's
> rule!". "Are you mad? We barely had anything to eat, and they were randomly
> killing people, we lived in constant fear!". "Yes, but we were young...."

I feel this is the same - your nostalgia is saying more about you than about
the times/the society. I also grew up in a communist country, and I don't feel
there's much that we lost by getting rid of them - you could easily choose to
live that very same lifestyle now, but (I speculate) you don't because you
know deep inside that you and your family would hate it.

------
rdiddly
Anyone remember the "bad capacitor epidemic" of the oughts? I've never been
Mr. Electronics Guy, but I taught myself how to buy and replace caps and
brought back several items from the dead. Got a free computer monitor for the
price of bus fare to pick it up from someone offering it on Freecycle, plus
whatever, a buck or two for a full set of caps?

This was when I was unemployed and the time/money ratio was worth it...

~~~
fein
Sometimes it does a weird horseshoe and becomes a time/ hobby ration that is
worth it even with your day job.

I fix stuff because its fun and frugal, and currently have an ongoing classic
car project which is fun but not so frugal. These things serve as a nice
mental break from coding all day, everyday.

~~~
rdiddly
Definitely - the challenge and variety were always part of the appeal. Maybe
it's partly that (and not just the fact that I'm employed now) that explains
why I have yet another "bad caps" project sitting within reach of me right now
that's been there for 2-3 years and I haven't even touched it! Thanks to
previous efforts, I have all the tools & know-how. I've done it several times.
It should be a total breeze, and uneventful. But what fun is that? :) Clearly
I am mentally ill.

------
dade_
Nothing wrong with specialization. It's a waste of my time and potentially a
waste of money if I ruin the item. There are many shops in town, some
excellent at mending and alterations and at very reasonable cost. For that, I
get excellent quality work that will hold up instead of me ruining the garment
through inexperience. I'll stick to my soldering iron, they can keep their
thread and needle.

------
philpem
I think make-do-and-mend kinda comes with the maker ethos, at least to me.

I've repaired the washing machine twice -- once for an open-circuit dryer
thermistor (bad batch apparently) and again for bad wiring on the door
interlock latch/switch.

The sensor cost £5, the interlock cost about half an hour of cleaning the old
switch with Q-tips and fifteen of crimping new Faston spade terminals onto the
wiring harness. The IDC connectors Indesit use on their wiring harnesses are
truly awful things.

I've seen similar in an AT&T 3B1 (aka UNIX PC), with the same failure mode:
the connector gets warm, the IDC contacts loosen, contact resistance
increases, the connector gets warmer and eventually it either burns up or
shorts out.

Can't say I'm a fan!

I've also lost count of the number of things I've fixed with the 3D printer...
I'd rather spend a few hours modelling something in OpenSCAD to fix something
else than throw the broken-thing away. It's nice practice for when I'm making
new things.

------
saulrh
I spent my time learning how to mend my computer and the pile of arcane
technologies that make it up. Out in the real world, as opposed to here on HN,
that is the mending that does not exist. It wasn't even forgotten; it's still
simply magic. I can call a repair service and have any mechanical object in my
apartment functional in hours. I can call my friends and one of them, or one
of their parents, will have a suggestion. But if I walk into a random room,
filled with fifty random people off the street, one in four of then will be
able to repair a car engine or patch a hole in a shirt, but I will be
literally the only person in the room that can get someone's phone back on
WiFi after the password changes. That's its own kind of mending, and one
that's much more difficult, much more useful, and much more _valuable_ , both
directly to an information worker like me and to civilization.

~~~
lm28469
It sure has its own merit, but I think you can remove the last sentence and
slow down on the "I'd be the only one in a room of 100 people able to connect
a phone to a network".

We can boast all day long about how good our tech skills are but out in the
real world it's far from "much more useful and valuable to civilization" than
a lot of things. It seems like a very narcissistic and simple point of view.

------
ggm
Some manufacturers "get it"

timbuk2 fixed my backpack 2+years into the deal. It was a close to zero paper
overhead engagement. If I'd known what their intended fix was, I would have
done it myself (it was some simple stitching mainly) but the point is they
_did_ repair, not replace. and I'm content.

------
dre85
I cracked the screen on my Samsung tablet. The local repair shops wanted more
than 200$to fix which is essentially the same price as that tablet brand new.
I bought a kit on Ebay and fixed it myself for 30$ and 30 minutes.

------
raincom
Fixing things is very common in the third world countries, because repair
charge is cheaper than its replacement. That's why you see lots of businesses
there that cater to these: tailors to TV repairmen..

------
zeroname
> "We lost the ability to mend"

No we haven't. If you need to sew on a button and you can't figure out how to
do it from looking at a piece of thread, a needle, and the other buttons, then
go spend fifteen minutes on a Youtube tutorial. It's _easy_.

If the task is more complicated any you really like the piece, consider the
fact that in terms of opportunity cost, it's almost certainly cheaper for you
to send the piece across the country (or the globe) and back than having it
fixed by yourself.

~~~
JJMcJ
Mentioned this in another reply but for buttons put something like a toothpick
between button and garment when sewing it on, so that there is some flex when
buttoning up. Otherwise it's too easy to have button fastened tight against
the garment and hard to manipulate.

------
gumby
I was interested in the discussion of home economics. My mother would not have
taken that class but growing up in SE Asia through war and peace was used to
fixing things. When I was a kid, even though she was a full time physician,
she also made my sister's and my clothes (in 1960s and 70s Australia).

My Dad made our furniture and fixed many things, but sewing? He hadn't the
faintest idea.

FWIW, neither of them fixes anything any more.

------
Timothycquinn
I just finished tuning up a White sewing machine and it blew me away how well
built the thing was. Very well used but still works like a charm. 99.9% metal
and made in Japan.

------
faebi
Every 6 months I used to go to my mother and use her Bernina sewing machine to
fix some clothes. The machine is old already but still works good. Recently
she bought me a new mechanical one. I really hope it will last all my life. I
don't need it much, but it's a pleasure to fix things or make something small.
Plus, the use of a powerful machine makes it way more fun than stitching.
Also, it still wastes less time than me searching and buying something new.

~~~
natch
>Recently she bought me a new mechanical one.

As opposed to a non-mechanical sewing machine? What does this mean? Guessing
you mean one with metal gears unlike the plastic-geared junk sold new in most
stores now?

~~~
faebi
The last "mechanical" one of Bernina: [https://www.bernina.com/en-US/Products-
US/BERNINA-products/S...](https://www.bernina.com/en-US/Products-US/BERNINA-
products/Sewing-Quilting-and-Embroidery/BERNINA-Classic-Series/BERNINA-1008)

From what I know there is just less logic and software inside. Whenever I
change the style of stitching, I can hear some mechanical clicking inside of
it. So I assume there is no fancy logic inside. Just pure mechanical switches
and an engine.

------
foxhop
I fixed my refrigerator that came with my new house. The fan that blows cold
air from bottom freezer to top of refrigerator was broken (and even missing
blades?). I found the part on the Internet and also took the time to by myself
a soldering iron.
[https://twitter.com/RussellBal/status/650091457303453696](https://twitter.com/RussellBal/status/650091457303453696)

------
busterarm
I had a Maytag washing machine from 1955 that was finally parted with in 2009.
It was actually probably entirely functional, but I just could not source a
new belt for it after months of trying. Working around the problem finally got
tiresome and it was sold to a prop company and replaced with a new machine.
The replacement needed multiple service calls for that one year that I owned
it.

------
newman8r
reminds me of some of my favorite quotable lines from Brave New World

"ending is better than mending" and "the more stitches the less riches"

------
MaysonL
Interesting: I just did laundry, including six long-sleeve shirts. Four of
them had spare buttons at the bottom: made by L.L.Bean, Nordstrom, Kirkland,
and an old Eddie Bauer denim picked up at a thrift shop. The two with no spare
buttons were both from Arrow. The problem is, I can't remember the last time I
owned eiter needle or thread.

------
mlthoughts2018
From the title I was hoping it would be about self-healing and mental health
recovery in the face of dysfunctional modern workplace environments like open
plan offices.

As with many things (like clothing in the article) we’ve also lost our ability
to mentally heal from the damage that repeated exposure to modern workplace
cultures inflicts on us.

------
JJMcJ
Hmm - I can sew on a button, and mend a seam.

The seam is an emergency repair and looks awful.

Button work is OK. My mom gave me the idea to put something, like a toothpick,
between button and garment, so the button has some flexibility when you put it
in button hole.

------
sandyhatches
This has been one of my favorite things about the 9 months I've spent this
last year in western Europe and Asia. Everything is mended and fixed, both in
shops and by day-to-day individuals.

Love it.

------
tonyedgecombe
We were taught this at school, I made a shirt as one of my projects.

------
Krykunenko
We always forget that jeans were designed for workers. Then they turned into a
whole culture. It is not clear why some create a real cult of some things?!

------
synthc
I've fixed several appliances by simply replacing a blown fuse. It is an easy
fix that costs very little time and money.

------
shocks
TV repair used to be a real trade.

I’ve not seen one in a long time. That tells you a lot.

------
hilbert42
I'm very surprised and pleased at both the number of responses and the actual
content of those responses (given it was posted on Hacker News). It tells me
several things, first that people are actually concerned by the waste created
by our throwaway society especially so when the items being thrown away are
otherwise serviceable except for minor faults, and second there's still an
interest in craft—people (some at least) still want to work with their hands.

Recently, this has come to the fore with movements such as those pushing the
Right to Repair hi-tech proprietary items such as iPhones and John Deere
tractor electronics, etc. I wholeheartedly support these movements, for as a
society I reckon we need to relearn how to get our hands 'dirty' by doing
physical tradie-like things from time to time.

No pun intended but there are many threads to this topic so it's hard to know
where to begin or how to paraphrase/limit my comments to a reasonable size.
Let's start with life skills and a quote from the article: 'There was once a
time when every American child was formally taught the basics of living'.
Whilst I understand and agree with the reasons given in the article why most
of us seem to have lost many basic life skills, I cannot quite fathom how we
let the situation degenerate to such an extent.

Surely basic life skills are more than important, they are in fact very
important. Why? Well there are many reasons why one should become reasonably
proficient at acquiring them and do so at an early age as is possible.
Essentially it boils down to one's need to be resourceful, especially so when
our modern-day 'crutches' either fail or are otherwise not available and we
have to improvise—or just generally (as one can do things much more quickly
and efficiently after having acquired them). Secondly, the need to acquire
basic skills at an early age is important for learning more advanced skills
acquired later on in life, as these build on earlier learning (even when the
new skills are quite different from the older ones). The fact is that learning
new skills as an adult is considerably easier if one already has the basics
fully conquered. For me, this truism is borne out of experience.

Years ago, I came up with the quip: 'Question: can one become a good practical
engineer if one cannot sew one's buttons back on?' Answer: probably not!'. It
arose after seeing how impractical and inept some qualified engineers were at
doing certain normal day-to-day manual tasks that one would have expected them
to already know how to do (as well as have an intrinsic feeling for doing it
well). For example, I've seen too many who've little or no feeling for
tightening up a screw or nut to the right tension without either stripping the
thread or having it too loose. As adults, they had not yet developed a feeling
for say the strength of everyday materials or how to work them (clearly this
puts them at a disadvantage to those who already have (assuming all else being
equal that is). The question is why, as for the most part, they were bright
people.

When I delved into the matter a little deeper I often found that as kids they
had done very little exploration of the mechanical world around them, they had
not done things such as building Meccano models, or pulling the lawnmower
engine apart, or attempt to fix broken clocks, etc. Seeing how and why things
break is an essential skill to learn at a very early age, especially so for
engineers, as it fine tunes one's understanding about how things work. As
well, one also develops a practical feeling for the strength of various
materials and other relevant properties that are not easily learned by simple
observation or from just reading textbooks.

It's my experience that really good techies are almost invariably good at most
of these simple skills and that they acquired the essence of them at a very
young age. It seems manual dexterity and concomitant mental agility (one's
overall perception of what needed to achieve the task successfully)
continually improved throughout their lives—skills they learned whilst young
transferred later on to a newer understanding of how to tackle work that is
much more complex. (In his book 'Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman', physicist
Richard Feynman beautifully illustrates how skills learned early on are useful
in later life. Feynman was not only a theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize
winner of the first order but also he was extremely adept with mechanical
things—skills he'd well honed as a kid (for instance, his exploits at
safecracking are well known, so also is his analysis of why Challenger's
rocket seals failed).

The general loss of craft, trades and various skills in fixing things has had
a large negative impact on the population as a whole. It has meant that
essentially the workforce has become deskilled in many areas (and consequently
so has the whole population). Combine this with the fact that nowadays
corporations are making much more use of proprietary (and increasingly secret)
technologies and we have the makings of a large social problem. For starters,
there is 'new' unemployment amongst once-skilled workers, and given the fact
that many workers, especially males, often are much happier when working or
creating things with their hands and who now have been deprived from making
their living in this way, has meant considerable distress for many of them.

Whilst this may seem contradictory (given what I've already said), it,
nevertheless, is all the more reason that we must re-evaluate and upgrade the
importance of developing life skills at a very early age (as today workers
need to be both nimble and flexible and to do so they need to acquire such
capabilities very early on in their lives).

This brings me full circle, as a kid my mother taught me to sew on buttons and
do basic repairs to clothes (which I did even though I didn’t much care for
it). She strongly insisted that boys also needed to know these skills (and I
suspect it was also to save her some work). If I had not learned those skills
when very young then the army would have insisted I do so under its
instruction not to mention learning all those other irksome dress-code-related
tasks upon which armies insist in drilling into poor unfortunate recruits such
as ironing, shining boots, putting creases in pants in exactly the right
places, etc., etc. (As part of ones larger kit was little repair kit that
contained some cloth patches, needles and spare buttons, and we were drilled
in the use thereof.)

My mother also taught me the basics of knitting, as I was forever getting
holes in my sweaters and she expected me to fix them (which I did pretty well
because when completed my fixes blended in and weren't very obvious). The
important point here is that it doesn't take much skill just to do a
reasonable repair. I never got past knitting squares and scarfs but even that
meant that I'd acquired sufficient skills to do a decent repair job. Moreover,
it's not essential that one has to like leaning such skills nor that of
actually doing them. As a male, knitting certainly wasn’t my scene but I'm now
glad that I've learned the basics (as it's actually turned out to be quite a
useful skill).

What my mother didn't teach me was how to use a sewing machine. Nevertheless,
I learned the basics anyway on her machine much to her chagrin. It was not
long before I was forbidden to use it, as I used it to stitch together
cardboard and other strange materials for various projects and models I was
working on. (Incidentally, it didn't stop me using it in secret but she had a
sixth sense and she always knew and caught me out after me having used it—it
seems I could never reset the tension knob exactly to her 'default' settings!)
;-)

Was learning the basics of using a sewing machine a useful skill for a
nine/ten year old boy to acquire? In the end it certainly was, as I later
learned the hard way, which was by that time the next generation of women had
arrived they had become sufficiently emancipated to have essentially given up
sewing machines altogether; so whenever I asked women in my life to repair my
clothes they simply told me to go take a running jump. 'Do it yourself or get
new ones' was the new mantra, so I had no choice but to comply.

Whilst I can say that using a sewing machine is a task that I certainly don't
relish, it nonetheless remains a fact that nowadays it's dead easy for me to
do simple repairs to torn clothes, or to use the button-hole attachment to
replace or renew buttonholes, or for me to take up jeans by a few inches.

------
alinspired
mending (even attempting) is a great opportunity to learn how things work.
there is no downside trying to dismantle anything that you consider broken,

------
foxhop
We also lost the ability to grow our own food.

------
purplezooey
I can say with certainty that none of my clothes are _talismanic_.

------
Isamu
What’s this “we stuff?

------
Farradfahren
I dont know why but it gives you massive pride, to remove planned obsolescence
from a very cheap item. Take the water heater of my mum - the toplid did no
longer work, because the axis it used was made from cheap plastic, resting on
even thinner plastic holders. Solution: Hot screw driven through. Now this
cheap item works trouble free since 5 years.

Same thing with a fancy looking scale- the wires internal where glued together
with a sort of ducttape. Two solder points later - meet the eternal scale.

I sometimes wonder, why this is not a buisness model. There must be money in
making cheap items ever lasting.

~~~
stevehawk
Thanks to the Internet everyone thinks engineering and manufacturing is all
about "planned obsolescence". Consumers want to blame the maker for the cheap
product they bought instead of blaming themselves for only wanting cheap
products.

~~~
bartread
This has been an issue since before the internet. Growing up in the 80s my
parents and grandparents would always be making comments like, "They don't
make things like they used to!"

Well I, for one, am extremely glad they don't. I remember cars from the 1960s
and 1970s, and they were ####ing _terrible_ : unreliable, unsafe, slow, poor
handling. Cars today are _vastly_ better, although I think the accelerating
trend for packing them full of complex electronics and gizmos may bite us in
the arse. There is simply a _lot_ more to go wrong in a car from 2019 than a
car from 1979, even if individual parts and subsystems are much more reliable.

My uncle and my step-dad both have more realistic views. My uncle used to ride
motorcycles back in the 60s and 70s and looked at me askance when I'd
complained that the problem with doing long distances on a bike with chain
rather than shaft drive is that you always needed to carry chain lube with you
to oil the chain every 200 - 300 miles. His comment, about an old Norton he'd
had, was that he needed to strip down and rebuild the engine every time he'd
done 100 miles (he didn't keep it long; even back then this was considered
awful).

Likewise, about 15 years ago I'd mentioned some relatively minor part needing
replacement after 50,000 miles on my first car, and my step-dad pointed out
that with a lot of the cars he'd driven in the 60s, after 50,000 miles you'd
need a replacement engine, never mind the odd part.

~~~
addicted
This has been an issue, however, once upon a time durability was actually a
marketing term used for regular appliances. Companies sold people on it.

Now durability as a term exists only for things like jeans and trucks where
it’s not supposed to indicate that you can use the thing for long, but rather,
to indicate a macho DIY culture.

I believe marketing has played a large role in moving consumers away from even
considering how long a product will last.

