Repair Extravaganza

On August 28th, 2025 JUMP in collaboration with the City of Boise, Public Works held the 6th Repair Café Boise.

150+ people participated by bringing a broken item. Over 70% of these items were fixed by a group of 40+ fixer volunteers, saving the attendees over $8,000 in estimated costs and diverting almost 500lbs from the landfill!

Repair Café Boise is a special event that brings community together, reduces waste, and helps us treasure and appreciate what we have, not what we desire. This event is a part of a growing Repair Cafe international movement to give communities a place to gather and repair clothes, toys, electrical appliances, and more. This event connects people to volunteer fixers and repair resources, not only providing repairs, but also to encourage adults and children alike to learn and gain competency in common repairs.

The first Repair Café was hosted in Amsterdam, Netherlands back in 2009. Since then, the movement has grown significantly with almost 4,000 local Repair Cafés started in communities around the world. Repair Café Boise is one such entity, which began as a collaboration between the City of Boise and JUMP to give the Treasure Valley their own free fixer event. The MAKE studio at JUMP was the perfect partner for a Repair Café event, due to the workshop already having a large number and variety of tools. Even so, it’s impossible to know exactly what tools and supplies are needed for each Repair Café, as almost any item could appear before us for repair. Luckily our volunteers are tenacious and creative, rarely accepting defeat on a repair, until the last idea has been tried.

Volunteers are the soul and lifeblood of Repair Café. Besides a couple of staff members at JUMP and the City scheduling the event and coordinating volunteers, equipment and materials, our 50 or so volunteers make the event. Anyone and everyone can help the community and Repair Cafés. They are schoolteachers and electrical engineers. Hobbyists and career professionals all donate their time and skills to the benefit of their community.

With huge retailers and mass-produced products becoming the ever-present norm these days, repairability and care for quality of the products in our lives has been reduced. These days we throw away mountains of trash, even items that barely have anything wrong. Through a simple repair, these items could continue functioning for years and years, but the skills and desire to repair have declined sharply. Particularly for our newer generations, raised in this fast production culture. Repair Cafés resist these trends and help everyday people see the impact these sorts of events can have on our lives and our landfills.

I am incredibly grateful to work alongside these volunteers and cherish that I can see their impact. I see genuine smiles on folks’ faces as a family keepsake has been given a new life after being glued back together. Or on a kid’s face as his favorite toy races around the room after being restored.   

Repair Cafés inspire curious minds. As a maker, one of my favorite aspects of the event, is how it reveals the intricate and fascinating world around us. When the fixer takes off the housing to a media player and exposes the circuit board, it appears to be magic to the inexperienced. Cleaning the numerous vacuums that come through our doors reveals the belts and mechanical connections that make the device work and delights the curious mind as it searches for understanding. There’s no better way to learn about an object, than tinkering around until it works as intended, and no sensation quite like that accomplishment you feel having struggled to fix it.

The spirit of Repair Café draws people in and gets them to care a little more for the world around them. We are proud that over half of folks leaving the Repair Café Boise event feel more confident about trying to repair items at home. We can create a sustainable world and work together with our neighbors to have a more resilient community.

We love the Repair Café and we hope you do too! If you have any interest in starting your own Repair Café, please reach out. We have the capacity to host two events a year, but we would love to see more neighborhoods in our valley hosting their own events and can find numerous ways to help kick it off. They are a fantastic way to bring community together and invest some good into the area. Look here for more resources from the international organization on starting your own Café!