My oven just died, repairing it wasnt possible The salesman told us that they are built to expire after about 7 years. Planned obsolescence is not environmentally friendly.
As an 87-year-old living alone, the world of technology can be a scary thing, but at times, we overthink the problem and, fearful of getting in too deep, we immediately call an expert for help. This past week, my Smart TV refused to do anything that I required: wouldn't shut off with the remote; wouldn't change channels . . . you get the drift. After a frustrating hour of rebooting frequently [I do know how to do that], I gave up and called the provider. Fortunately for me, and for her, she was patient and knowledgeable and suggested various actions . . . none of which restored my television. Finally, as an afterthought, she asked, "When was the last time you changed the batteries in your remotes?" [My TV requires two remotes to work]. Within a couple of minutes, I had "replaced" the batteries, and VOILA, I was back in business. So, sometimes, it is a good idea to look for the simplest correction, which I had not done. Now, if I can just remember that the next time my remotes don't work. Who knew?
The dead batteries in a remote never occurred to the people at my cable company. A calm and helpful technician came to my home and found the problem after just a few minutes and a few other approaches that didn't work. A little embarrassing but very effective 😊👏
I had a similar problem this past weekend. My TV wouldn't respond to the remote no matter what I did. The little red light on the remote flashed every time I pressed a button so I knew that it wasn't the batteries. I finally realized that I probably needed to use a different remote. And VOILA!
Is it Occam's razor (somehow that doesn't seem right) that says that the simplest answer is probably the correct one?
It is important and gratifying to do the things people have always done, lest such skills and the related independence vanish.
Garden for food and beauty. Raise animals for wool, eggs and companionship. Fix old machines to extend their lives, relieve the burden on landfills, and enjoy the satisfaction of saving a relic instead of discarding it.
My great-grandparents and grandparents were cabinetmakers, gold smiths, watchmakers, dairymen, mechanics and blacksmiths, as well as bankers, teachers, accountants, engineers and businessmen. I’m certain their wide ranging abilities gave them a great feeling of self assurance. They were able, and capable. I am certain they and their peers were not likely to ever hear the words “we don’t really repair things anymore.”
First, one of the things I enjoy about your writing Eliot’s is that you follow ‘this could be bad” with “but this is what could be good.” It’s hopeful, so thank you.
I have been drawing for at least 50 years, and my medium of choice remains pen and ink. I like fountain pens because I enjoy reusable instruments with no moving parts. That said, I discovered drawing with an Apple Pencil and an iPad a few years ago, and it has been a revelation. I’ve been able to make illustrations that were beyond my native technical skills. Now to be clear, I’m not using AI, I’m still hand drawing everything, but with media that’s way more flexible and forgiving than I’d experienced before. I still at times feel like I’m somehow cheating by doing less work by “traditional” means, and I do have kept a Moleskine journal for 11 years. It is the yin to my iPad’s yang. But give up my iPad? Not likely. It has expanded my vision without becoming the master of it.
I have a stacked washer/dryer combo, recently the spin cycle has stopped working, I’m sure it’s electrical related but can’t figure out how to open the control knob. I’m tempted to just buy new and toss this old unit out. It’s been reliable for some time now and was included with my home (mobile home) purchase. I sure enjoy the convenience of washing at home. To replace new will require something of similar size and must be a gas supplied dryer.
Reading your story about tinkering with gadgets and seeing how things worked reminded me of something crazy I used to do as a younger child. I’d get a jar and mix up everything I could find under my grandmother’s sink, then put the lid on and shake it up! I called it making a hypnotize-boom. So lucky I didn’t mix anything that could have really gone boom!
Elliot, thanks again for your uplifting thoughts and encouraging way of looking at this, an issue that I have mostly found pretty depressing when thinking about of late.
For those of us who are older, it's so easy to bemoan the current throw away culture that we see happening, and to think "what is this world coming to" as we complain and worry about the deterorazation of our society.
So I appreciate your new and positive way to look at this as it encourages us to see the good, and to realize that man will always have the resilience and intelligencen to deal with whatever comes our way.
Thank you Elliot. As was predicted in the 1960's we have become a 'throw away' society. Sometimes I wonder if this predilection for tossing aside something broken or worn has led to trumpist fascism.
I remember darning socks that had a hole in the heel - now we just toss them in the garbage and buy a new pair. I used to repair my own cars, even to replacing motors as well as generators, clutches and so on. I also repaired my own washers. driers, dishwashers. But once the computerized cars - off to the dealer for repairs.
Our government has been broken for 40+ years, but scrapping it in favor of fascism will only make it worse, not better. What we need now is to retain our democracy but fix it.
We need to reverse the trend to gush our wealth up to a minuscule minority and distribute it back to the majority.
We need to get the money (meaning graft, bribery and other corruption) out of politics. We need to shut and lock to revolving door from Congress to high paying lobbying. We need to reduce the number of lobbyists to 500 max from private business and 500 from charities.
Most of all we need to investigate and make sure all our members of Congress in both houses are persons of high integrity that will not, under any circumstance accept bribes, 'gifts' of more than a cup of coffee or occasional dinner. I don't see this as 'going back' I see it as bring good things from the past, into the future.
Probably not, but the utilities that run fossil fuel electricity generating power plants, the companies that mine the coal to fuel them as well as the companies that drill, frack, pipeline and store the natural gas to make the huge amounts of electricity required for AI computing and cooling them, and all the mess of them that together are donors and bribers of politicians and members of our judiciary will enjoy the profits that come from the attempt.
There is now a "repair" movement; they hold repair fairs for small appliances, clothing, sharpening knives, etc. One can find all sorts of "fix-it" instructions on Youtube. I bought an old Isuzu compact diesel pickup for the express reason that I could identify the components under the hood and it had no power components that could fail spectacularly. I get compliments on it all the time from guys "of a certain age". I still take it to a mechanic, but they appreciate it as well. I certainly am not in favor of simply replacing things; I'm nursing along my ancient early model iPhone because I don't want the 6 month apprenticeship in learning the complexities of a new one, or the new phone price, for that matter. Likewise my laptop. I accept the fact that certain new applications won't run on the operating systems they are no longer updating. Someday I'll probably be forced to replace them, but not until I've wrung every last byte out of them both. Call me a Luddite; I was born in the last century, not this one. I took apart a lawn mower engine, fixed it and used it to assemble a mini-bike as a kid. I built a dune buggy out of junk-yard parts as a teen. I have all sorts of ancient tools in my shop from the era when one built and repaired all sorts of things. They will last longer than me, to be sure. You can be comforted by the fact that there's one thing we'll go on repairing over and over until it's not possible anymore; US. I spent an entire career fixing people's innards. It was marvelous while it lasted. Technology made it's in-roads; I had to learn robotic-assisted surgery in my final phase of practice; at that time it was a solution looking for a problem, but eventually found a niche and it continues to evolve, at tremendous price. Give me a simple tools, anytime, over a hulking machine to do the same task with diminishing returns.
Excellent, Elliot! — especially that killer last line that stopped me in my tracks. How often have I fallen (or almost fallen) into that just-toss-it-and-get-a-new-one way of thinking? Ouch.
I appreciate the crystal clear reminder.
And I also enjoyed being reminded of how much I have enjoyed fixing things or just taking them apart to see how they worked. As a child, I once pulled all the tubes out of a broken radio just because. When I somehow managed to put them back in, wonder of wonders, it worked!
(That may or may not have convinced me I was the next Edison. Or something.)
In my teens, I scrounged up a couple hundred bucks to buy a 1957 MGA I saw sitting out in a field with no hood (“bonnet”), no convertible top, and hardly any floor. Tall grass had grown up through it. But I fixed it! Everything from cutting a new floor, rewiring a whole ton of stuff (wiring harness? What’s that?), and crawling around in a salvage yard to get a still-good windshield out of a wreck, to sewing the new upholstery on my grandma’s sewing machine.
And with the help of a shop manual I managed to rebuild dual carburetors, although until then, I had no idea what a carburetor even was. (Actually, right now I couldn’t really explain that. Never needed to mess with one again. But gaining the knowledge that I really could usually figure stuff out if I wanted to was a wondrous gift that truly keeps on giving.)
Then hot, humid days of wet sanding, followed by hanging cheap plastic drop cloths from the ceiling of my mom’s garage and painting it with a rented compressor and gun. Cinnamon Fire Mist. Definitely not a regulation MG color. But gorgeous.
I knew the JC Whitney catalog inside and out, and drove an ice cream truck all summer to get the cash to pay for everything, including a new convertible top and side curtains.
This was somewhat unusual for a girl back then. No, it was a whole lot unusual. But I had amazing parents who aided and abetted me and my siblings in stuff like this and more.
I’ll be 72 a week from tomorrow, and this fix-it, build-it yen is still with me, though I don’t do it as much as I used to. But not long ago I got my mom’s old no-electronics sewing machine tuned up and it works like a champ, plus my brother has a pretty good woodworking setup, and now thanks to you, I feel a new project coming on.
How exciting!
How can we encourage children in the joy of curiosity and the adventure of exploring old disheveled or broken things and bringing them back to life? Are there enough small, fixable things left to play with, and learn from, and to experience the thrill, and joy, and can-do self-confidence that blossom from these experiences?
Ultimately our own selves, our shared planet, our relationships, civil discourse, and democracy itself might all benefit in myriad ways.
(Well, I meant just to say a quick thank-you but all this rambling and ruminating really has given me an exciting new fix-it project idea and a lovely, contemplative Sunday. So thanks for all that, too!)
Bravo, Rebecca! I did not have supportive parents ("Girls don't do that!), but my curiosity about how things worked prevailed although in secret. Even now at 76, "You can't do that" from neighbors and "Uh oh" from my sister don't stop me. I love fixing rather than replacing, i.e. dishwasher that didn't wash, my 20-year-old SUV, ceiling fan, leaky plumbing, drywall, computer, and my crowning achievement many years ago replacing the motor in a Datsun station wagon in front of an audience of men who laughed while waiting for me to give up. First turn of the key it started much to their chagrin.
As to how we encourage young people to fix instead of discard, we have a huge job ahead because most of them have been raised by parents who can't change a tire or unstop a toilet. Might be time to bring back "shop" classes.
My husband and son dropped a couch on the side mirror of our Honda Fit. I glued it back on 6 years ago with lots of super glue. Just sold the car with the side miror still in place.
We run a small business that repairs computers. When we started, 20+ years ago, we could fix just about everything. Product by product, items were made to be disposable. The glue, plastic, and screws used by the manufacturer were /designed/ to break when you tried to take it apart. Now we mostly fix software problems. Frustrating to this environmentally-conscious person.
Re: cars - take good care of your pre-2010 era auto and you’ll likely get 500k miles or more. They are less complicated and easier to repair.
Next week I am going to have my third lumbar spine surgery at 85. I am still trying to fix things despite a bad history. I feel like if I don’t do this I will spend the rest of my allotted time slipping from where I am today. Maybe, just maybe, this minimally invasive surgery will arrest the slide and the immobility. If not I have my trusty walker(s) and my elevator and I will muddle through. It has been kind of hard keeping up with this and the torturous election run up. I could hardly laugh at Colin Jost and Michael Che on SNL last night. If the Founding Fathers could see this I think they would beg King George III for a reconciliation.
Oh, the wistful good old days! I have been reflecting on that a lot lately. Having reached my 72nd birthday I have been pondering what I have done, and what, due to physical limitations, I can still do. I have been feeling like one of those old cars my husband would repair with duct tape - it ran but was not perfect. I am now on my own journey to relevance - that's for another Substack article.
My oven just died, repairing it wasnt possible The salesman told us that they are built to expire after about 7 years. Planned obsolescence is not environmentally friendly.
I believe that planned obsolescence is now illegal in Europe. Everything made must be made so that it can be fixed. What a concept!
As an 87-year-old living alone, the world of technology can be a scary thing, but at times, we overthink the problem and, fearful of getting in too deep, we immediately call an expert for help. This past week, my Smart TV refused to do anything that I required: wouldn't shut off with the remote; wouldn't change channels . . . you get the drift. After a frustrating hour of rebooting frequently [I do know how to do that], I gave up and called the provider. Fortunately for me, and for her, she was patient and knowledgeable and suggested various actions . . . none of which restored my television. Finally, as an afterthought, she asked, "When was the last time you changed the batteries in your remotes?" [My TV requires two remotes to work]. Within a couple of minutes, I had "replaced" the batteries, and VOILA, I was back in business. So, sometimes, it is a good idea to look for the simplest correction, which I had not done. Now, if I can just remember that the next time my remotes don't work. Who knew?
The dead batteries in a remote never occurred to the people at my cable company. A calm and helpful technician came to my home and found the problem after just a few minutes and a few other approaches that didn't work. A little embarrassing but very effective 😊👏
I had a similar problem this past weekend. My TV wouldn't respond to the remote no matter what I did. The little red light on the remote flashed every time I pressed a button so I knew that it wasn't the batteries. I finally realized that I probably needed to use a different remote. And VOILA!
Is it Occam's razor (somehow that doesn't seem right) that says that the simplest answer is probably the correct one?
“We will never be able to fix what is broken if we see everything as replaceable.” BRILLIANT!
*sigh*
Right!
It is important and gratifying to do the things people have always done, lest such skills and the related independence vanish.
Garden for food and beauty. Raise animals for wool, eggs and companionship. Fix old machines to extend their lives, relieve the burden on landfills, and enjoy the satisfaction of saving a relic instead of discarding it.
My great-grandparents and grandparents were cabinetmakers, gold smiths, watchmakers, dairymen, mechanics and blacksmiths, as well as bankers, teachers, accountants, engineers and businessmen. I’m certain their wide ranging abilities gave them a great feeling of self assurance. They were able, and capable. I am certain they and their peers were not likely to ever hear the words “we don’t really repair things anymore.”
Repairing objects is often possible for the resourceful ones among us. Repairing relationships is essential.
First, one of the things I enjoy about your writing Eliot’s is that you follow ‘this could be bad” with “but this is what could be good.” It’s hopeful, so thank you.
I have been drawing for at least 50 years, and my medium of choice remains pen and ink. I like fountain pens because I enjoy reusable instruments with no moving parts. That said, I discovered drawing with an Apple Pencil and an iPad a few years ago, and it has been a revelation. I’ve been able to make illustrations that were beyond my native technical skills. Now to be clear, I’m not using AI, I’m still hand drawing everything, but with media that’s way more flexible and forgiving than I’d experienced before. I still at times feel like I’m somehow cheating by doing less work by “traditional” means, and I do have kept a Moleskine journal for 11 years. It is the yin to my iPad’s yang. But give up my iPad? Not likely. It has expanded my vision without becoming the master of it.
Elliot - sorry, typing is a whole different issue!
What does that do to our senses of self and community? Great question. 👍
I have a stacked washer/dryer combo, recently the spin cycle has stopped working, I’m sure it’s electrical related but can’t figure out how to open the control knob. I’m tempted to just buy new and toss this old unit out. It’s been reliable for some time now and was included with my home (mobile home) purchase. I sure enjoy the convenience of washing at home. To replace new will require something of similar size and must be a gas supplied dryer.
Reading your story about tinkering with gadgets and seeing how things worked reminded me of something crazy I used to do as a younger child. I’d get a jar and mix up everything I could find under my grandmother’s sink, then put the lid on and shake it up! I called it making a hypnotize-boom. So lucky I didn’t mix anything that could have really gone boom!
Lucky indeed. Thanks for sharing.
Lol really funny 😄
Elliot, thanks again for your uplifting thoughts and encouraging way of looking at this, an issue that I have mostly found pretty depressing when thinking about of late.
For those of us who are older, it's so easy to bemoan the current throw away culture that we see happening, and to think "what is this world coming to" as we complain and worry about the deterorazation of our society.
So I appreciate your new and positive way to look at this as it encourages us to see the good, and to realize that man will always have the resilience and intelligencen to deal with whatever comes our way.
Thank you Elliot. As was predicted in the 1960's we have become a 'throw away' society. Sometimes I wonder if this predilection for tossing aside something broken or worn has led to trumpist fascism.
I remember darning socks that had a hole in the heel - now we just toss them in the garbage and buy a new pair. I used to repair my own cars, even to replacing motors as well as generators, clutches and so on. I also repaired my own washers. driers, dishwashers. But once the computerized cars - off to the dealer for repairs.
Our government has been broken for 40+ years, but scrapping it in favor of fascism will only make it worse, not better. What we need now is to retain our democracy but fix it.
We need to reverse the trend to gush our wealth up to a minuscule minority and distribute it back to the majority.
We need to get the money (meaning graft, bribery and other corruption) out of politics. We need to shut and lock to revolving door from Congress to high paying lobbying. We need to reduce the number of lobbyists to 500 max from private business and 500 from charities.
Most of all we need to investigate and make sure all our members of Congress in both houses are persons of high integrity that will not, under any circumstance accept bribes, 'gifts' of more than a cup of coffee or occasional dinner. I don't see this as 'going back' I see it as bring good things from the past, into the future.
Sounds like a monumental repair job to me. I wonder how AI might improve our legislative process...or not.
Well it could certainly do better than the MAGA crowd of halfwits (I'm being genereous)
Probably not, but the utilities that run fossil fuel electricity generating power plants, the companies that mine the coal to fuel them as well as the companies that drill, frack, pipeline and store the natural gas to make the huge amounts of electricity required for AI computing and cooling them, and all the mess of them that together are donors and bribers of politicians and members of our judiciary will enjoy the profits that come from the attempt.
There is now a "repair" movement; they hold repair fairs for small appliances, clothing, sharpening knives, etc. One can find all sorts of "fix-it" instructions on Youtube. I bought an old Isuzu compact diesel pickup for the express reason that I could identify the components under the hood and it had no power components that could fail spectacularly. I get compliments on it all the time from guys "of a certain age". I still take it to a mechanic, but they appreciate it as well. I certainly am not in favor of simply replacing things; I'm nursing along my ancient early model iPhone because I don't want the 6 month apprenticeship in learning the complexities of a new one, or the new phone price, for that matter. Likewise my laptop. I accept the fact that certain new applications won't run on the operating systems they are no longer updating. Someday I'll probably be forced to replace them, but not until I've wrung every last byte out of them both. Call me a Luddite; I was born in the last century, not this one. I took apart a lawn mower engine, fixed it and used it to assemble a mini-bike as a kid. I built a dune buggy out of junk-yard parts as a teen. I have all sorts of ancient tools in my shop from the era when one built and repaired all sorts of things. They will last longer than me, to be sure. You can be comforted by the fact that there's one thing we'll go on repairing over and over until it's not possible anymore; US. I spent an entire career fixing people's innards. It was marvelous while it lasted. Technology made it's in-roads; I had to learn robotic-assisted surgery in my final phase of practice; at that time it was a solution looking for a problem, but eventually found a niche and it continues to evolve, at tremendous price. Give me a simple tools, anytime, over a hulking machine to do the same task with diminishing returns.
Excellent, Elliot! — especially that killer last line that stopped me in my tracks. How often have I fallen (or almost fallen) into that just-toss-it-and-get-a-new-one way of thinking? Ouch.
I appreciate the crystal clear reminder.
And I also enjoyed being reminded of how much I have enjoyed fixing things or just taking them apart to see how they worked. As a child, I once pulled all the tubes out of a broken radio just because. When I somehow managed to put them back in, wonder of wonders, it worked!
(That may or may not have convinced me I was the next Edison. Or something.)
In my teens, I scrounged up a couple hundred bucks to buy a 1957 MGA I saw sitting out in a field with no hood (“bonnet”), no convertible top, and hardly any floor. Tall grass had grown up through it. But I fixed it! Everything from cutting a new floor, rewiring a whole ton of stuff (wiring harness? What’s that?), and crawling around in a salvage yard to get a still-good windshield out of a wreck, to sewing the new upholstery on my grandma’s sewing machine.
And with the help of a shop manual I managed to rebuild dual carburetors, although until then, I had no idea what a carburetor even was. (Actually, right now I couldn’t really explain that. Never needed to mess with one again. But gaining the knowledge that I really could usually figure stuff out if I wanted to was a wondrous gift that truly keeps on giving.)
Then hot, humid days of wet sanding, followed by hanging cheap plastic drop cloths from the ceiling of my mom’s garage and painting it with a rented compressor and gun. Cinnamon Fire Mist. Definitely not a regulation MG color. But gorgeous.
I knew the JC Whitney catalog inside and out, and drove an ice cream truck all summer to get the cash to pay for everything, including a new convertible top and side curtains.
This was somewhat unusual for a girl back then. No, it was a whole lot unusual. But I had amazing parents who aided and abetted me and my siblings in stuff like this and more.
I’ll be 72 a week from tomorrow, and this fix-it, build-it yen is still with me, though I don’t do it as much as I used to. But not long ago I got my mom’s old no-electronics sewing machine tuned up and it works like a champ, plus my brother has a pretty good woodworking setup, and now thanks to you, I feel a new project coming on.
How exciting!
How can we encourage children in the joy of curiosity and the adventure of exploring old disheveled or broken things and bringing them back to life? Are there enough small, fixable things left to play with, and learn from, and to experience the thrill, and joy, and can-do self-confidence that blossom from these experiences?
Ultimately our own selves, our shared planet, our relationships, civil discourse, and democracy itself might all benefit in myriad ways.
(Well, I meant just to say a quick thank-you but all this rambling and ruminating really has given me an exciting new fix-it project idea and a lovely, contemplative Sunday. So thanks for all that, too!)
Bravo, Rebecca! I did not have supportive parents ("Girls don't do that!), but my curiosity about how things worked prevailed although in secret. Even now at 76, "You can't do that" from neighbors and "Uh oh" from my sister don't stop me. I love fixing rather than replacing, i.e. dishwasher that didn't wash, my 20-year-old SUV, ceiling fan, leaky plumbing, drywall, computer, and my crowning achievement many years ago replacing the motor in a Datsun station wagon in front of an audience of men who laughed while waiting for me to give up. First turn of the key it started much to their chagrin.
As to how we encourage young people to fix instead of discard, we have a huge job ahead because most of them have been raised by parents who can't change a tire or unstop a toilet. Might be time to bring back "shop" classes.
My husband and son dropped a couch on the side mirror of our Honda Fit. I glued it back on 6 years ago with lots of super glue. Just sold the car with the side miror still in place.
We run a small business that repairs computers. When we started, 20+ years ago, we could fix just about everything. Product by product, items were made to be disposable. The glue, plastic, and screws used by the manufacturer were /designed/ to break when you tried to take it apart. Now we mostly fix software problems. Frustrating to this environmentally-conscious person.
Re: cars - take good care of your pre-2010 era auto and you’ll likely get 500k miles or more. They are less complicated and easier to repair.
And have fewer plastic parts.
Next week I am going to have my third lumbar spine surgery at 85. I am still trying to fix things despite a bad history. I feel like if I don’t do this I will spend the rest of my allotted time slipping from where I am today. Maybe, just maybe, this minimally invasive surgery will arrest the slide and the immobility. If not I have my trusty walker(s) and my elevator and I will muddle through. It has been kind of hard keeping up with this and the torturous election run up. I could hardly laugh at Colin Jost and Michael Che on SNL last night. If the Founding Fathers could see this I think they would beg King George III for a reconciliation.
Joan, you made me laugh out loud with that last sentence. Thank you!
Oh, the wistful good old days! I have been reflecting on that a lot lately. Having reached my 72nd birthday I have been pondering what I have done, and what, due to physical limitations, I can still do. I have been feeling like one of those old cars my husband would repair with duct tape - it ran but was not perfect. I am now on my own journey to relevance - that's for another Substack article.
The right to repair is a concept whose time has come:
https://www.repair.org/
https://www.ifixit.com/