impermanence

Just finished mending some holes that appeared in a couple sweaters and a pair of gloves, which procedure has prompted a short, not particularly original post about the value of repairing instead of replacing.

Repairing should really take its place as a 4th 'R' in the mantra of 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle'. It is an art that has sadly dwindled... who darns socks in this day and age? You just pick up another pack from Shopko... or Fleet Farm in my case. Now, I've never darned a sock myself, and I'm unlikely to when it comes to the sort picked up in packs of 6 for $3. The whole purpose of being for something like that is to be disposable, and I don't think darning would extend the life of such a sock for long enough to be worthwhile. I also have nicer socks; thick, part wool, wintry socks. Those I would mend... will mend, when in the course of human events they develop little holes. My nice wool sweaters I mended this evening. They were cheaply acquired at thrift stores, but they are not cheap items. Both are 100% merino wool and are, I believe, attractive and flattering colors and shapes. They are worth hanging onto. A corollary to the proposal that it's good to repair things because it keeps nice things around longer is that if you have nice things you are more likely to wish to repair them to keep them around longer. A really durable, comfortable pair of shoes is worth resoling. A pair of flip flops... well, that's really only a sole to begin with so that's a poor example perhaps... but a $15 pair of sneakers isn't worth taking to the cobbler even if he could do anything about it (and did you know that Appleton is still home to a guy who makes his living repairing shoes? ... I'm pretty sure he's still there in his little downtown storefront anyway, I haven't been by there all that recently).

[Ranting] Things were once built to last, and to be fixable. Fewer and fewer things are now. Computers are still expensive enough that we have them repaired or learn to do repairs and replacements ourselves. Cars too, and many bicycles. Many electronic devices have cheapened to the point where they don't make economic sense to repair, and have become complicated enough that there's less to repair: a fried chip, or some inaccessible plastic thinger that is half the size of your pinkie fingernail, cost a fraction of a fraction of a penny to produce and yet its loss renders a CD player entirely useless. The day is coming when a computer will be like a VCR I'm sure... well, I guess I mean DVD player, since VCRs are an obsolete technology entirely. Most likely a computer will just be an access point for this cloud processing network we hear about from technological gurus. Hopping back to bicycles, you can buy a completely cheapened and complicated bicycle ('complicated' in this instance refers largely to the use of plastic to make a lot of crucial components, which is also cheapening, but plastic is a much more complicated material to produce than steel or even aluminum... to the best of my understanding), and you can buy this bicycle for an absurdly low price. And when something goes wrong you will buy a new one because even if a bike mechanic is willing to work on the $80 Magna you bought at Toys R Us (they'd rather you bought from them, but would accept at least you buying something that wasn't marketed as a toy for Pete's sake), the poor quality of the components make such a bike not worth servicing in the first place (like the cheap cotton tube sock). The repair will be too time consuming and insufficiently lasting to be worth the time and money. Don't even get me started on the toy store's 'fully suspended' models of 'mountain bikes'...

Okay. This is growing longer than I intended. I will conclude with my belief that fixing things also gives you a better understanding of things you use (bicycles are a good example of this, me being an avid bicycle repairman, I can tell you I know a lot more about that vehicle now than I did before I started mucking about in bottom brackets). You might even learn how to make something yourself, using the best materials you can find and constructing it with care, but even the care you put into mending has an effect of adding to the value of your possessions; not, perhaps in resale or antique value (the antique appraisers tend to hate when things are repaired for some reason), but sentimentally surely. Those little mending stitches, glue beads, welds or whatever are better than writing your name on the label for claiming an object as yours (questions of the evils or benefits of private property are hereby ignored for the sake of a more poetic argument).

Mending.
Give it a try. It's more fun than shopping.