Notes from a Weekend of London Repair Cafés

Last weekend I took the train to London to visit three repair cafés and one makerspace, notebook in hand. Our Utrecht network has been running fix-it days for a while, and I wanted to see what others do differently. The cover photo is from the walk back along the river on Saturday night, tired and very happy.

1. A proper triage desk

Every café I visited had one person at the door whose only job was to ask "what's wrong with it?" and send people to the right table. Waiting times were shorter and fixers weren't interrupted mid-repair. We've done this informally until now. From September it becomes a fixed role on our rota.

2. Write every repair down

One café logs every item: what it was, what was wrong, and whether it got fixed. After a year they could tell me that toasters and vacuum cleaners make up a third of their visits, and that most "broken" lamps only need a new switch. That tells them which volunteers and spare parts to bring.

3. Fixers teach, visitors do

Whenever it was safe, the visitor held the screwdriver. People leave having learned something, and they come back as volunteers far more often.

4. Safety without fuss

Mains-powered items were tested before going home, and nobody opened a microwave. A few simple rules on the wall, applied to everyone, regulars included.

Weekend totals: 3 cafés, 1 makerspace, 63 items seen, 41 fixed, and one very stubborn sewing machine that defeated four people. I'll bring the full notes to our next coordinators' meeting and post a summary in Repair Café Volunteers afterwards.