I was standing over my kitchen sink last Tuesday, staring at a leaky faucet that had been mocking me for weeks. It wasn’t a big leak—just a steady, rhythmic drip-drop that seemed to get louder the moment I tried to fall asleep at night. My first instinct, like many of us these days, was to pull out my phone and look for a replacement. It’s the default setting, isn’t it? Something breaks, we click a button, and a new version shows up on our doorstep forty-eight hours later. It’s clean, it’s easy, and it’s incredibly hollow.
But for some reason, that day, I didn’t click “buy.” I went into the junk drawer, found a wrench that hadn’t seen the light of day since 2018, and decided to see what was actually going on inside that chrome pipe. I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I just felt this sudden, sharp itch to understand the things I own, rather than just being a temporary landlord for them.
That’s what I want to talk about today. Not the mechanics of plumbing—because honestly, I’m still pretty bad at it—but the actual, soulful shift that happens when you decide to repair something instead of tossing it in the bin. It’s a bit of a lost art, and I think we’re losing more than just money when we stop fixing things. We’re losing a bit of our connection to the world around us.
The weird guilt of the throwaway culture
We live in a world designed to be discarded. It’s everywhere. From the plastic toys that crack after five minutes to the phones that start to lag the second the new model is released. It’s exhausting, to be honest. There’s this constant pressure to keep upgrading, keep consuming, and keep moving. We’ve become a society of “replacers.”
I remember my grandfather’s workshop. It smelled like sawdust and old oil. He had this toaster—a heavy, chrome beast that looked like it belonged in a 1950s diner. It had been repaired so many times that I’m pretty sure the only original parts were the outer shell and the power cord. He knew every quirk of that machine. He knew exactly how much to wiggle the lever to get the perfect shade of brown. To him, the toaster wasn’t just a kitchen appliance; it was a companion that he had cared for over decades.
When we throw things away the moment they stutter, we lose that history. We lose the stories that get baked into our objects. There’s a strange, subtle guilt that comes with a trash can full of things that “just stopped working.” It’s a feeling that we’re just passing through, leaving a trail of broken plastic behind us. Fixing things, even something as small as a loose button or a wobbly chair leg, feels like an act of rebellion against that disposability.
Overcoming the ‘I’m not a handy person’ myth
I used to say this all the time. “Oh, I’m not good with my hands.” I’d say it with a bit of a laugh, as if being incapable of basic maintenance was some kind of charming personality trait. It wasn’t. It was just a shield for my own fear of breaking things further. I was terrified that if I opened up a gadget, springs would fly everywhere and I’d be left with a pile of useless junk.
Here’s the secret I’ve learned: you probably will break things further at first. And that’s okay. Most things are already broken when you start, right? You can’t make something “more broken” than unusable. Once I embraced the idea that I was allowed to fail, the fear evaporated. I realized that “handy people” aren’t born with a innate knowledge of how a carburetor works; they’re just people who aren’t afraid to look at a mess and try to figure it out.
It starts small. You tighten a screw. You sand down a rough edge. You use a bit of wood glue on a picture frame. These tiny victories build a sort of “competence muscle.” You start looking at the world differently. Instead of seeing a broken lamp as a problem to be solved with money, you see it as a puzzle to be solved with your brain. It’s an incredibly empowering shift in perspective.
The basic toolkit of curiosity
You don’t need a professional-grade workshop to start. In fact, having too many specialized tools can be a distraction. When I started, I had a mismatched set of screwdrivers and a pair of pliers that I think I inherited from a former roommate. That was enough. If you’re looking to build a “starter kit” for the curious mind, I’d suggest just a few things:
- A multi-bit screwdriver (the kind where the heads swap out).
- A pair of needle-nose pliers for the fiddly bits.
- A decent roll of duct tape—obviously.
- A small flashlight, because you can’t fix what you can’t see.
- A bottle of wood glue or a strong multi-purpose adhesive.
That’s really it. The most important tool isn’t in your toolbox anyway; it’s your eyes. Most repairs are just about looking closely enough to see where the physical connection has failed. Is the wire frayed? Is the plastic cracked? Is the bolt loose? Most of the time, the answer is simpler than you think.
The meditative quality of the work
There is a specific kind of silence that happens when you’re focused on a repair. The rest of the world—the emails, the news, the social media notifications—all of it just fades into the background. You’re just there, in that moment, with that object. It’s a form of mindfulness that no app can replicate. It requires patience, which is a rare commodity these days.
I spent three hours once trying to fix an old mechanical watch. It was tedious. My fingers felt too big, my eyes felt tired, and I lost one tiny screw three times. But during those three hours, I wasn’t worrying about my mortgage or my career. I was just focused on the tiny, rhythmic heart of that watch. When it finally started ticking again—that soft, rapid click-click-click—I felt a rush of genuine joy that no shopping spree has ever given me. It was the joy of being useful.
We’re so used to instant gratification. Repairing things is the opposite. It’s slow. It’s often frustrating. You might have to walk away from a project for a day because you’ve reached your limit. But that delay makes the eventual success so much sweeter. It teaches you that some things are worth the wait.
Why failure is actually a victory
I’ve had my share of disasters. I once tried to fix a blender and ended up blowing a fuse in the entire kitchen. I’ve tried to “mend” a pair of jeans and ended up sewing the pocket shut. These moments are embarrassing, sure, but they’re also the best teachers. Every time I fail at a repair, I learn something about how the thing was built in the first place.
I think we’ve become too afraid of being “bad” at things. We want to be experts immediately, or we don’t want to do it at all. But there’s a wonderful freedom in being a beginner. When you’re trying to fix something yourself, you’re not a professional—you’re an explorer. You’re poking around in the guts of the modern world. If you fail, the worst-case scenario is that you’re exactly where you started: with a broken item. But even then, you’re actually a bit further ahead, because now you know one way not to fix it.
The environmental ripple effect
We talk a lot about sustainability in big, abstract terms. We talk about carbon footprints and global supply chains. Those things are important, but they can feel overwhelming. Repairing things is sustainability at a human scale. It’s a way to say, “I am going to keep this one piece of plastic out of the ocean for another year.” It’s a tangible, physical way to care for the planet.
It’s also about respecting the resources that went into making that item. The minerals mined from the earth, the energy used in the factory, the fuel used for shipping—when we throw something away prematurely, we’re disregarding all of that effort. Fixing it is a way of honoring the life cycle of the object.
Connecting with the community of ‘Fixers’
One of the most surprising things I discovered when I started fixing things was the community. It turns out, there are millions of people out there who are just as obsessed with mending old chairs or reviving dead electronics. Whether it’s an old neighbor who knows exactly how to tune a lawnmower or a group of people meeting at a local community center for a “repair cafe,” there’s a shared language of problem-solving.
There’s a certain kindness in it, too. People who like to fix things generally like to help others learn how to fix things. It’s not about hoarding knowledge or charging a fee; it’s about the collective satisfaction of making something work again. I’ve had strangers spend twenty minutes explaining the difference between two types of wood stain just because they saw me looking confused at the hardware store. It restores your faith in people a little bit.
The mended life
As I’ve spent more time fixing the things around me, I’ve noticed a change in how I feel about my life in general. I’m less frantic. I’m less inclined to think that a new “thing” will solve my problems. When you know you can fix what you have, the urge to always want more starts to fade. You start to appreciate the scratches on your table and the patches on your jacket. They’re signs of a life lived, not just a life bought.
So, the next time something breaks—whether it’s a toaster, a toy, or a loose floorboard—don’t reach for your phone first. Reach for a tool. Take it apart. Look at the insides. Even if you don’t end up fixing it, you’ll have spent an hour or two really knowing your home. And in a world that’s constantly trying to sell us the next new thing, knowing what we already have is perhaps the greatest repair of all.
It’s not about perfection. It’s not about having the fanciest stuff. It’s about the quiet, humble work of keeping things going. It’s about being a little more patient, a little more curious, and a lot more connected to the world beneath our fingertips. And honestly? That leaky faucet? It hasn’t dripped once since I put it back together. I might just be a handy person after all.