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Page added on December 18, 2016
Instead of another shopping fix, repair what we’ve got
Ah, it’s that fake time of the year for me.
I don’t remember my family celebrating the Christmas season with heart and soul like the faithful do when I was a small child, but I do remember unboxing the plastic tree. Fake presents went under it. I wrapped empty boxes in reused patterned paper, and stacked them to get that “my cup runneth over” look.
Pretty. Empty. Fake.
But the warm and fuzzy feeling?
Real.
Then, growing up, the fun of earning enough to buy frivolous things kicked in, so I now fill DHL cartons with my online shopping.
The boxes are now full. The presents are now real. The warm and buzzy feeling now comes from shopping for fake needs. Fake because, come on, how many pairs of shoes do I really need?
We are in the thick of the peak shopping season, so this is a good time to ask ourselves how much stuff we really need. Are unsustainable shopping habits – fast fashion, the quick churn rate of tech gadgets – going to wreck the earth?
How do I go from buzzy feelings about full FedEx boxes back to fuzzy feelings about empty boxes under a plastic tree? Should I gaze upon the ginormous, man-made Christmas trees – with lavishly wrapped empty boxes at their feet – that malls plant outside and in their atriums to lure customers with that warm shopping feeling this time of the year?
If there is any moment to re-energise the business (retail sales, excluding that for motor vehicles, dipped 0.3 per cent in October from a year earlier), this is when retailers are doing it.
United Overseas Bank said in a recent Sunday Times report that its customers traditionally spend the most during the year-end festive season. “Between November and December, we typically see an average growth of about 15 to 20 per cent in billings over the two months, compared with the first 10 months,” said the bank. In terms of spend category, “retail makes up more than 30 per cent of card billings”.
Stores here said last month’s Black Friday sales helped to increase footfall and sales, reported The Straits Times. Retailers like Robinsons, Courts, Topshop, Topman, Harvey Norman and H&M had rolled out promotions for what is known in the United States as Black Friday – the day after Thanksgiving. It was coined to describe the day retailers turned in profits and went “into the black”.
With great deals come the great urge to buy. But for those privileged to actually have more than enough, how much is enough?
This year began with Ikea’s head of sustainability saying: “If we look on a global basis, in the West, we have probably hit peak stuff.”
Mr Steve Howard of Ikea, the Swedish company that is the world’s largest furniture retailer (and maker of home accessories that I keep wanting to buy), said at a Guardian Sustainable Business debate: “We talk about peak oil. I’d say we’ve hit peak red meat, peak sugar, peak stuff… peak home furnishings.”
The Guardian said: “The average Western consumer’s home is bulging with all the materials and goods it needs, runs the line. Hence, Ikea needs a cleverer offer to its Western consumers – helping them recycle what they have, for instance.”
Perhaps shops can sell experiences instead of stuff, like offering customers the struggle of building shelves that can never be put together. Name the shelf “Karaktar”. Tagline: “Build Karaktar. Build character.” Sell boxes labelled “Schrodinger’s katt” that we can ruminate about for weeks.
For one British mother, “peak stuff” does not compute. A woman, who saw her picture of a mountain of presents for her children go viral last Christmas, has shared an image of an even bigger pile, reported BBC. About 300 gifts can be seen swamping mum-of-three Emma Tapping’s tree in the picture. Last year, her photograph was shared more than 30,000 times on Instagram with many criticising her. However, she said her family members “deserve a great Christmas”.
Are we approaching “peak stuff” in Singapore? And if we aren’t, should we get into that frame of mind anyway because how many bedsheets or bikes do we really need? How much more trash can landfills and oceans, birds and turtles swallow before earth throws up on itself like a New Year’s Eve drunken nightmare?
Well, how about this as a New Year’s resolution for the privileged: Repair what we’ve got even as we buy fewer but better things.
The inspiration is from Ikea’s homeland: Next year, Sweden will give citizens money back for fixing their stuff.
The Local reported that the Swedish Parliament has passed the 2017 Budget, which includes tax breaks on repairs. CNN described them as “repairs to footwear, clothes, leather goods, household textiles and bicycles… The value-added tax on getting these items fixed will be slashed”. Swedes can also claim back from their income tax part of “the labour costs of fixing home appliances – such as washing machines, fridges and stoves”.
If you want to do-it-yourself here, you could check out Repair Kopitiam – informal workshops held at community spaces around Singapore, where trained volunteers help residents to combat the buy-and-throw-away culture.
In a small way, I already repair things that I love and I get the major warm fuzzies from doing so: Mending a pink umbrella back to life twice; sewing skirts (and heck, sometimes happily walking around in holey clothes); getting boots repaired even though the amount paid could buy me a new pair.
As for curbing my need for shopping fixes: I am trying to buy more second-hand clothes. Stuff hasn’t peaked for me.
I have yet to fix myself.
Maybe I am trying to fill the empty boxes under my childhood Christmas tree after all.
19 Comments on "Instead of another shopping fix, repair what we’ve got"
penury on Sun, 18th Dec 2016 3:51 pm
The terrible truth is: Things can not be repaired. The action may be possible however, the loss of activity in the world economy would be devastating.
makati1 on Sun, 18th Dec 2016 6:17 pm
Penury, you beat me to the punch on this one. You are correct. MOST things are not repairable and were designed that way by the manufacturers. Or, if they are, it costs as much as, or more, than a new one.
When I was a kid, a TV was a vacuum tube screen and a dozen or so small vacuum tunes that you could see if they were burned out and then take the bad one to the local hardware store, buy a new one and pop it in and the TV was repaired. Ditto for radios, etc. I did most of my own car repairs in our home garage when I was in my 20s. I could make a long list of things I repaired then, and I am neither electronically not mechanically inclined. It is just that things were designed to be repaired easily. Now they seal the containers so you cannot even get them apart and almost everything has a computer chip or ten and there is nowhere to buy them if you did know how to replace them.
Our whole supply system is planned obsolescence, but few realize how close we are to the end of that also.
paulo1 on Sun, 18th Dec 2016 7:18 pm
I made the two gifts it was my job to deal with this year. My wife is getting a small lap table for when she occasionally has a lie-in and gets breakfast in bed. It will also allow her to use her lap top if she feels like it. It fits under our bed. My son is getting a coffee table as he has a very crappy one. Both are made of red alder cut, milled, and machined by me. They are traditional mortise and tenon. My daughter and her family are getting a large basket of foody things we put together including a swack of coffee and some cash. (They could always use a few bucks). All of us have opted out of the buy buy fest for many years.
More and more of my friends have ditched the consumer aspect of Christmas. It is quite sickening to walk into a dept. store this time of year. Add in a dysfunctional family gathering where people who shouldn’t drink get drunk and dredge out family conflicts, politics, and general meanness, it is the worst time of the year. Talk about a lost generation.
sidzepp on Sun, 18th Dec 2016 10:59 pm
In 1963 my grandfather gave me a subscription to NatGeo and renewed it every year until his death. Greatest gift ever received. We have been giving magazines to the grandkids. Three appreciate them greatly. The other six are annoyed that they are not flashy use one gadgets that get thrown into the closet on the 26th. Kind of sums of society. Oh well, what the hell, have a merry Christmas and peaceful (and hopefully cooler) New Year!
dooma on Mon, 19th Dec 2016 12:16 am
I bought a Homelight line trimmer a few years ago as I thought I was buying a better brand/product.
After a couple of years of faithful service, it blew an exhaust gasket. Simple two bolt replacement job I thought as I went to a mower repair place.
To my surprise, The owner told me that they don’t make any parts anymore to suit that model.
They want you to throw it away and buy a new one. Even though the compression of the engine is excellent and it starts first pull. I ended up making my own. But imagine how many people would think “Oh well, at least I got a couple of years out of it” and took it to the dump.
We deserve to drown in our mountains of Chinese-made crap.
Merry Consume-mus.
dave thompson on Mon, 19th Dec 2016 12:32 am
The biggest kick I get in life these days is being able to repair something or other. Sadly less and less of our consumables are repairable.
Go Speed Racer on Mon, 19th Dec 2016 5:23 am
When your ‘made in China’ hedge trimmer
from Home Depot stops working, probably
about 6 months after you buy it, then
make sure you dispose of it ethically
and responsibly.
If you have a river running thru town, throw it in.
But if you have only dry land, locate a steep incline off the side of the road and
throw it off the side so it tumbles down quite a ways and nobody sees it.
If your hometown is very flat,
and no river, then maybe you have
train tracks and you can put it onto there
so it gets chopped in half.
Thanks for doing your part to dispose
of your broken Chinese hedge trimmmer responsibly.
Cloggie on Mon, 19th Dec 2016 5:38 am
One of the first things I bought when I began to make money more than 30 years ago was a 3+2 Pierre Cardin sofa for 4000 guilders (Manhattan was once bought for 60 guilders from the “Indians”.lol):
https://ondisplayblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/encounters-in-old-manhattan-american-museum-of-natural-history.jpg
It is still in my living room, but it needs a new filling. Finally found someone who can do that for 400 euro plus cleaning, so I can watch German and American movies, eh… I mean read complex philosophical works for my last 30 years, when they can carry me with sofa and all to my last resting place.
Davy on Mon, 19th Dec 2016 5:50 am
A future reality in a world of decline and decay will be salvage. The innovation of taking existing products and
materials and creating something new. Cannibalizing equipment for parts to keep things going. This will be combined with pre-modern engineering and mechanical knowhow. Cables, rope, sail, and wheels will make a comeback. Hopefully by this time we will have significant amount of solar equipment dispersed into our worlds so we have light to read books and tinker on this stuff because during the day we will be busy with the activity of growing and preserving food.
I don’t know how or if this collapse process takes us to a new world but if it does I can assure you these things will be part of it. One needs only spend some time in the third world to see the process of making do with what is available.
I am already stocking up on tools and equipment with a future. I have a big library. I am running a permaculture farm. I am not sure if this will matter For my survival but at least I feel I am taking action. It has become a fascinating way of life. I am learning many things and specializing with a few things. I am not rejecting the status quo because it is what it is. What I am doing is harnessing the status quo to leave it. I am yielding to it when I must but always with the focus of leaving it. Where I can I am rejecting it and where I can’t I am embracing it.
This is an experiment and not meant to be an advantage over you. I am interested in charting a post modern way of life in my own little local. I am not doing this to brag. If any of you want to know some of my successes and failures I am an open book. Not everyone can do this and I respect this. Those of you who can i recommend it. I am here now because I have researched the future and it warrants this type of action but no amount of research can know what is ahead especially in relation to your circumstance.
Jerome Purtzer on Mon, 19th Dec 2016 2:13 pm
I’m not sure if there are many Nicola Tesla followers on this website. Tesla was convinced that there is unlimited power available if we know how to and are willing to build the necessary machines to harness it. His Wardenclyffe installation in New York was meant to prove this assertion. Modern society and virtually every electronic device in it would not exist if Tesla had not lived to create the basis. Of course in our forward thinking profit oriented society when Tesla died the U.S. Government seized all his documents and inventions and they are supposedly under lock and key somewhere-no doubt for our own security. Wardenclyffe was sold for scrap when Tesla’s financing was pulled. The answer was given to us but, because the big money people couldn’t figure a way to meter the power, we’re stuck with coal fired power plants, oil powered cars and the climate that came along for the ride.
Dooma on Mon, 19th Dec 2016 5:53 pm
Nice advice about my hedge trimmer Speed 🙂 I also tipped the two-stroke oil in the river and it made the water a purdy colour.
peripato on Tue, 20th Dec 2016 2:34 am
That picture is a sign of mental illness.
Midnight Oil on Tue, 20th Dec 2016 6:29 am
My grandfather, born circa 1890, was from the old country in Europe. Believe me he was into fixing and saving. Even had the own shoe repair station in the cellar and patched up the plumbimg, heating (coal furance!) and other house repairs. Had a pantry and an old antique gas stoves from 1930 he kept going.
Boy, talk about a different mindset from now.
Had a repairman cam to fix the window A/C here and he was not able to get it to work….said flatout…BUY a new one…its cheaper!!!!
Outcast_Searcher on Tue, 20th Dec 2016 11:00 pm
makati1, the TV with the tubes was TERRIBLE, re durability. They broke all the time. My dad and I spent lots of time shopping for and testing tubes at the tube testing machine in the drugstore.
Once TV’s went mostly solid state, my dad rejoiced. Once TV’s went 100% solid state electronics, TV’s just ran for a long time without interference. My first simple RCA TV ran for 13 years with me doing NOTHING to it.
What’s too bad is that people feel that they need to constantly get new electronic gadgets, when they don’t need them.
It’s not like we need a new cell phone every year. It’s not like PC’s are evolving rapidly now.
But if a modern PC had tubes, it would fill city blocks and a tube would blow many times a minute, and it would cost tens of millions of dollars.
makati1 on Tue, 20th Dec 2016 11:05 pm
Sorry, you must have had a lemon. I rarely replaced tubes over the 10 years we had our Sylvania 19 inch TV with halo vision. 1952 to 1962.
You missed the point in my comment…
makati1 on Tue, 20th Dec 2016 11:08 pm
Jerome, I suggest you read “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Ran. They had a miraculous engine that ran on static electric. lol Techie dreams…
Medanyo on Mon, 5th Dec 2022 10:27 am
Do you know quality stores where you can buy designer furniture, I’ve found so far only a couple of artists who make furniture, but I do not like their work at all.
Uhalas on Mon, 5th Dec 2022 10:27 am
Here you can find contemporary living room furniture https://www.roomservice360.com/modern-living-room-furniture.html from the best designers in the business! Scrolling through the site feed you will definitely fall in love with one of the products. After I ordered the sofa, I was just delighted. This item fits perfectly into my interior. The whole process from ordering to receiving the order was just wonderful… that’s what professionalism is all about.
Uhalas on Mon, 5th Dec 2022 10:28 am
Here you can find contemporary living room furniture https://www.roomservice360.com/modern-living-room-furniture.html from the best designers in the business! Scrolling through the site feed you will definitely fall in love with one of the products. After I ordered the sofa, I was just delighted. This item fits perfectly into my interior. The whole process from ordering to receiving the order was just wonderful. that’s what professionalism is all about.