Most days, Brendan O’Leary leads a team of manufacturing engineers in air-cooled chillers at the Carrier manufacturing plant in north Charlotte. But on Saturday, he had his hands on a stranger’s KitchenAid mixer that had just stopped working.
O’Leary was deep into its gears, volunteering his time to get it to work again as part of a four-hour Repair Cafe at Charlotte’s Innovation Barn. The Rutgers University-trained engineer, who previously worked for Boeing in Montana, explained that his fascination with fixing things started as a kid.
Repair Cafes started in the Netherlands as a way to promote sustainability and keep items out of landfills. Repair Cafe chapters now exist in Asheville, the Triangle, Charlotte, Winston-Salem and Greensboro.
Aragorn Kaplan, a vice president at Bank of America, helped organize the Charlotte chapter about 18 months ago.
“There are certain types of people who just like to fix things, who like to see things work properly, and it’s more people than you might know,” says Kaplan.
In a different era, it may have been a shade-tree mechanic who could fix a neighbor’s lawnmower. People aren’t connected like that anymore, Kaplan says.
On Saturday, there were 18 “coaches” volunteering their time at different work stations from noon to 4 p.m. These coaches were working on everything from lamps to televisions, wooden chairs to electric scooters. Kaplan says the coaches have an overall “success” rate of about 60%. About 75 people brought in items to be fixed on Saturday.
When someone leaves disappointed, it’s often because they are missing a part or maybe the problem is too technical for the level of expertise, says Kaplan.
(Note: Attempts to fix the motor on my battery-operated pole chainsaw were abandoned after I told O’Leary the manufacturer’s warranty would take care of the problem.)
In another case, a young girl seemed super excited to leave with her electric scooter working again.
The city of Charlotte and local environmental group Envision Charlotte opened the Innovation Barn in an old city garage several years ago to showcase ways to minimize waste. Repair Cafe does not have to pay to use the building because it shares similar goals.
“It’s not about the money,” Kaplan says about the volunteers, “it’s about the ability to see something that was broken now working.”