If It IS Broke, Fix It!
Posted by Midwest Mom | Filed under Midwest Mom
We’ve all heard, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” It means, “Don’t make work.”
But what about when it IS broke? How did we get to this place where we don’t even TRY to fix it? Where we just chuck it and buy a new one. And almost certainly a bigger-shinier-fancier-substantially-upgraded-in-every-way new one.
Well, I’m broke. (Now I’m using the other sense…the one where you don’t have any money.) When you’re broke and something breaks, you don’t buy a new one. You do without or you fix it. And really…isn’t repair a lot greener?
We had three computers. (Yeah, there’s four of us here.) One is my husband’s laptop that is critical for his job. It’s about five years old and over the winter, the display broke. OK. Now he can’t use it as a laptop anymore. He has to use it at his desk at work or at home where he can connect it to an external monitor. Not ideal, but free. He already had the two monitors.
Because of my work, I had a 5yo PC and a 6yo Mac. In the spring, the Mac broke. Wouldn’t do anything but beep. OK. I don’t require a Mac anymore, so for the past two years it was just the kids’ internet and homework machine. They can share the PC with me now.
In the middle of summer, the PC broke. I don’t need to make the case that I’m well past the point where I’m going to go without a computer. If you’re reading this, you’re likely perched on the same point.
I took the PC to a computer repair store…the core voltage on the motherboard was shorting. Or some such. Long-story-short…it’s non-repairable.
I consider my options. With my husband’s laptop, I go to my library’s website and order a book about upgrading and repairing Macintoshes. With the book and about ten minutes, I learn that the beeping is the hard drive—the hard drive broke, the computer’s fine. In ten more minutes, I learn that a new hard drive…that of the bigger-shinier-fancier-substantially-upgraded-in-every-way sort is going to cost $50.
We married the old, good computer to the old, good hard drive and with a $50 new hard drive we are back in business and I have all my “stuff”! (Well, I can’t access it all yet because of cross-platform issues, but I’m working on it.)
If we hadn’t been in desperate financial straits, I prolly woulda gone right out and bought at least one new computer. Now I can make the buy decision without a gun to my head and when I do, my kids get their Mac back!
As another example, me mum was in a minor car crash recently. The insurance company wanted to “total” the car—it would cost more to repair than it’s worth. They would pay what the car was worth, less the deductible. “Nice try,” said me da’. If he had accepted the “total” diagnosis, he would have had to come up with much more money to replace the car than if he just had to pay the deductible on the repair. He insisted on a new estimate using only second-hand parts. The car is being repaired.
I once bought a near-new vacuum cleaner at a yard sale for $5. I could see that the belt was broken and I gambled that that’s why it had been tossed. I was right. It’s a great little vac. Someone actually got rid of a vacuum when the belt broke. What the?
What did you fix when others wouldn’t?
-mwm
A stay-at-home mom managing the family finances, Midwest Mom is our New Voice from south of the 49th Parallel. Married for 19 years with two boys, 11 and 9, she considers herself “a self-help junkie.”
February 25, 2012 at 10:04 am
A good point Midwest mom! Unfortunately, I’m not handy. Hubby used to fix stuff on our old vaccuum all the time. We even had duct tape around parts of the cord that were frayed. We finally got a new vaccum.
I think you make a good point. On the flip side, I do find that quite often when it comes to things (certain electronics for example), it is actually cheaper to replace them then fix them. It seems things are designed these days to be used for x amount of time and then discarded.
February 25, 2012 at 5:33 pm
I find that things just aren’t as durable as they used to make them. Everything from clothes to cars is made with cheaper materials. Recently I compared an older pair of jeans and a new pair from the same store – the new one not only has thinner material but the dye keeps coming off on my hands… So as much as I’d like to keep using what we have, it is difficult when companies skimp like this and make stuff tough to fix.
February 26, 2012 at 12:39 am
We recently had a similar computer issue in our home. My Hubby’s 2 year old work lap top ($799 new) went kaput. He spent over $300 at Best Buy getting them to diagnose, repair, replace parts, and in the end it still didn’t work and he ended up getting a much better lap top to replace it for $599 since prices on electronics keep decreasing. Here’s hoping the new one lasts longer than 2 years!
February 27, 2012 at 1:34 pm
Great post! I just watched a documentary this past weekend called Manmade Landscapes and it is a huge eye-opener to how much ‘stuff’ is made and bought and discarded: piles and piles of stuff are filling our world.
One thing I try to fix is clothing. Learning to sew has saved me tons of money and our landfills a good pile of old clothing.
February 27, 2012 at 6:42 pm
Yeah, you are all so right about everything being so crummy now.
Consumer Reports wrote that the “outlet” store brands often manufacture special crummy things just for the outlet stores and not the mall stores. After that I noticed that clothing labels said “Store XYZ Outlet” right on them. When I asked about it in several stores, they will readily admit that they are lesser clothing manufactured especially for the outlet stores with the same name as the mall stores.
The one that I find the most frightening is appliances. They (especially clothes washers) are so fancy now…computerized and with lots of bells and whistles. And yet everyone seems to have a story of how the wash machine, dryer or dishwasher lasted 4 years and was too expensive to repair.
But then we all want to buy things really cheaply and in the big box stores. I’m as guilty as anyone.
February 28, 2012 at 9:18 am
As someone with a mac that is slowly starting to die… what book did you find about repairing them?
February 28, 2012 at 10:49 am
The book I used was “Mac Upgrade & Repair Bible” by Todd Stauffer (c)2003. Good luck!
March 4, 2012 at 6:43 pm
I absoutely agree with this post. It is very “easy” to just go out and buy new when we have to. I am very lucky to have a hubby who is able to fix things… the coffee grinder is a prime example (dies on a routine basis and hubby always manages to make it work again!), the snowmobiles, car maintenance etc. It saves us a whole lot of money!!!
March 7, 2012 at 5:13 am
Thanks a lot…
Hello, Thanks for your post, pretty good reading. I’ll be looking forward for your next post….
March 8, 2012 at 2:29 am
Thanks a lot…
Hello, Thanks for your post, it was really informative. I’ll be looking forward to coming again….
March 10, 2012 at 5:06 am
Thanks a lot…
Hi there, Thanks for your post, it seems that you know what are you doing. I’ll be looking forward for your next post….
April 2, 2012 at 11:15 am
It helps to know what is worth repairing, and what is not. When our garage door opener broke, my husband automatically assumed we would need a new garage door opener. Instead, it just needed an inexpensive part and we used a garage door company to fix it, which was much less expensive than a new garage door opener. However, after pricing out parts to fix our 6 year old push mower, I think a new mower is in our future. But glad we did the homework first.
April 10, 2012 at 11:32 am
Thanks a lot…
Hi, Thanks for your post, pretty good reading. I’ll be looking forward for next article of yours….
December 6, 2012 at 6:11 pm
The first thing everyone should know about computers is preventative maintenance get a can of canned air and spraying away from you, in short spurts between your keyboard keys, both lap tops and pc, If you are leary about taking the cover off your cpu you can simply turn the box until the air openings show and again using short spurts blow the dust of the fans. Your PC should be blown out least once a year, and most local repair shops (find a reliable one, avoid the box store repair. a reliable computer repair store will charge about 40 dollars to physically clean out your computer, run diagnostics, defrag, and clean out virus’s, malware, adware, and spyware which can wreck and shorten the life of your computer,) Make sure your computer has lots of clear space around the cpu or the lap top, the fan can’t cool if there is not enough air to circulate and cool the drives and motherboard. If you have a lap top get a lap top cooler mat at the same time you purchase laptops frequently have short lives because of lack of cooling power, the harder your drive has to work and the longer, the hotter it tends to get. You can also get your vacuum clear close the lap top (do not vacuum your key board unless you have one of those octipus caps otherwise you will lose your keys which are very expensive to replace) hold it over the vent spaces to help suck out the dust which gets in there. cooling ‘mats’ racks, trays, will extend the life of you lap top by leaps and bounds!