Best ever after a summer off

After 2 months off for an amazing summer of sun, sea and sausages, Repair Café Weymouth returned on Saturday 14th September for its best ever repair event. We had an amazing 93 items brought in for repair that may otherwise have ended up in landfill or, at best, left languishing unused in a loft. So popular were we that we had to politely turn people away by 11am – just 30 minutes after we opened. We repaired or provided repair advice for a massive 83% of items including sewing zips and handbags, clocks, laptops, plates, hoovers, necklaces and much more. This is an amazing achievement and we are forever grateful to our wonderfully talented volunteer repairers.

Carla

We trialed a new process to encourage our visitors to chat sociably at a table in the café area, instead of queuing. The lovely ‘Carla in the pink hat’ gave them numbered tickets as they arrived and our Triage volunteers came to them to register their broken items.

At this event we welcomed some amazing new volunteers. José, a drug and alcohol councillor, did a great job of organising our visitors as they arrived ensuring we tracked their wait in the café area.  Steve, with his common sense approach, made the decision that incoming forms should by-pass Reception, helping us to get forms to repairers more efficiently and we hope he will join the committee. Rick helped for the first time as a Mechanical repairer and Jane on Sewing.

We always welcome new volunteers so do please contact us.  We need repairers to cover absences and we always need volunteers to help make events run smoothly or help with admin tasks in the background.

If you’ve been to one of our repair events we hope that you were able to get your item repaired.  We are continually improving our whole process of receiving visitors and repairing items but are always happy to hear positive feedback and suggestions for improvement.

Otherwise do spread the word about Repair Café Weymouth.  We throw away vast amounts of stuff, which could get a new lease of life with a simple repair. One repair can save up to 24 kilos of CO2 going into the atmosphere, by preventing the need to recycle old items and manufacture/ transport new ones – and it will save you money and help save our planet.

We look forward to seeing you at our next event.  Our Repair Café events generally take place on the 2nd Saturday of the month (apart from July and August) and you’ll find us at the Palm House Café in Weymouth.

Rob Cheeseman