On the mend: 8 tips on how to repair your clothes
The garment industry has a giant carbon footprint, labor issues, and a massive waste problem. We have the power to change how and where we shop, but there’s another way to shift our consumption: the practice of repairing our clothes. After all, the most sustainable garment is always the one already hanging in your closet.
But mending is more than a household chore: it can also infuse new joy in our habits, skills, perspective, and community.
Outside/In producer Justine Paradis talked to a few repair pros and came up with 8 tips on embracing a repair mindset, lengthening the life of our clothes, and getting the practice of mending into the rhythm of our lives.
Featuring Emilia Petrarca, Dante Zagros Gonzalez, Steve Foss, Arounna Khounnoraj, Sonali Diddi, Vrylena Olney, Ely Spencer, and Ali Mann.
An orange sweater being repaired with colorful darns. Courtesy Arounna Khounnoraj.
1. Do a closet audit.
“Reacquaint yourself with what you have,” suggested Emilia Petrarca, fashion writer and author of the newsletter Shop Rat. “That’s really fun for me: doing a dress up afternoon where I put on music and try on everything in my closet and just being like, ‘oh, right! I have all the things that I think I lack.’”
You’ll probably find a collection of clothes gathering dust in the back of the closet, just because they need a small mend. So, as you go, make a repair pile. Don’t let that jacket without a button sit in the back of the closet for another season.
“I now know how to get pit stains out, which honestly is huge because I was just going through a lot of clothes. I'm a sweaty girl, and that was not a sustainable thing for me,” said Emilia. Courtesy Emilia Petrarca.
2. Sometimes your clothes need something very simple: a wash. Getting good at laundry is also a repair skill. As a self-described slob, Emilia has a few tricks up her sleeve.
“Cornstarch will get out oil stains. Dish soap is good in a pinch. I used it the other day when I spilled fish oil on myself,” she said.
When it comes to blood stains, Emilia has a weird but great tip: the best on-the-go tool is saliva. Specifically, the enzymes in your own saliva can break down your own blood, according to her source.
Laundry. Kinda metal.
3. When you do bust out the needle and thread, start with something small.
“I love an accomplishable goal. Pick something that you can do in under two hours is my first piece of advice,” said Dante Zagros Gonzalez, costume designer and repair specialist for the clothing brand Toast.
Don’t tackle that delicate sweater with hundreds of moth holes as a first project. Pick something hearty that won’t fall apart easily with a small tear (Dante recommends a square inch or less). The goal is to give yourself a confidence boost right off the bat, which is important, Dante says, because the biggest barrier to mending is that people don’t believe they can do it.
“I think it's a story that people tell themselves that they're not capable of doing crafty things… The catch-22 is that if you don't think that you can, then you won't,” said Dante.
But many repair techniques are rooted in very basic sewing skills, like over-under weaving or running stitches, and it doesn’t need to be complicated. Pull up YouTube and find a video on darning or sashiko, and just try it!
Steve Foss, cobbler and operator of Maine Shoe Repair in South Portland, Maine. Photo: Justine Paradis.
4. Don’t hesitate to get help from the pros. Establishing relationships with your local tailors and cobblers can be fun and rewarding, not to mention cheaper than replacing broken stuff—though depending on where you live, finding a shop might not be easy. There are far fewer cobblers than there once were, and many are approaching retirement. On her newsletter, Shop Rat, Emilia put together a spreadsheet of recommendations for New York City and beyond.
5. When it’s time to buy something new, opt for clothes that can be mended. This might mean doing your research before shopping, and perhaps spending more on fewer, higher-quality garments. Check the fabric tags: avoid blended fabrics, and instead seek out natural materials, like linen or wool, which tend to be easier to mend.
A repair cart at the Patagonia store in Freeport, Maine. Photo: Justine Paradis.
Plenty of brands also have repair departments or secondhand resale platforms, including Patagonia, Eileen Fisher, H&M, Levi’s, L.L. Bean, Arc’teryx. Nordstrom claims to be “the largest employer of tailors in North America.” Even the global retail giant Uniqlo has a repair department now, at least for some products—though this shift is not necessarily coming from the goodness of their corporate hearts.
“Why are the brands moving in this space? Policy is making them move in this space,” said Sonali Diddi, a researcher on sustainability in the fashion industry at Colorado State University.
New EU regulations went into effect in fall 2025. Which will eventually require textile producers to share more data with the public and to pay for textile waste: collecting, sorting, and recycling. A similar law passed in California in 2024.
6. Turn repair into an art project. Instead of hiding a repair, consider highlighting it, perhaps by using colorful stitches that contrast with the fabric, elaborate embroidery over a stain, or quilting fun patches over holes. For inspiration, look at Celia Pym’s Norwegian Sweater, these wool coats repaired with lavish embroidery, or this plain white t-shirt mended by Maya Skylark.
Each mend can be a "celebration of the hole," as textile artist Arounna Khounnoraj put it.
“I always felt like the holes themselves were kind of a vestige of that person… how they used it, how they wore it,” said Arounna, author of the book Visible Mending. “Almost a remnant of that person in some way.”
7. Embrace a repair mindset. At first, a new chore often feels like a burden. But usually, mending is a lower lift than we think.
“It's not that hard. Everyone's always like, ‘how do you have time to hand wash all your sweaters?’ I'm like, it takes ten minutes,” said Emilia. “I just sort of take a deep breath and tell myself if I can just spend 15 minutes doing this before I go to bed tonight, I will thank myself for the rest of the season.”
Plus, mending feels good. The skills are relatively simple, and bringing clothes back to life can bolster a sense of capability—even a quiet psychological resilience.
“I can fix it. I will fix it. It will break again. I will fix it again… I can do hard things. It is a very optimistic mindset and not a nihilistic one,” said Dante.
Attendees of a Ripe for Repair gathering in Portland, Maine. Courtesy of Ali Mann.
8. Find community. Find a repair cafe near you, or explore starting your own. You can also find workshops and mending circles in community spaces, like thrift shops, public libraries, or craft stores.
“I think there are some very basic, fundamental reasons why this feels like a good idea,” said Ali Mann, organizer of the monthly Ripe for Repair meet-ups in Portland, Maine. “Creating a space for people to be with each other, keep each other company, help each other out in a low stakes way that really has the potential to bring in people across lines of difference, across race, across class, intergenerational… because everybody has stuff.”
ADDITIONAL MATERIALS
A few extraordinary examples of mending: Celia Pym’s Norwegian Sweater, a Japanese fisherman’s jacket constructed with sashiko, wool coats repaired with lavish embroidery, and a plain white t-shirt mended by Maya Skylark.
Look for mending classes at your local library, thrift stores, knitting shops, or other community gathering places. Remote classes are also offered at places like Tatter. You can also find a repair cafe near you, explore starting your own, or try throwing a repair party with friends.
“Why Do Clothes Suck Now” – a great primer on Culture Study
A striking visual demonstrating the decline in sweater quality since the ‘90s.
How to buy a sweater that doesn’t suck (Defector)
“Repair Month” on Emilia Petrarca’s newsletter Shop Rat, including laundry tips and her crowd-sourced Google spreadsheet of repair specialists in NYC and beyond.
SUPPORT
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CREDITS
Host: Nate Hegyi
Produced, reported, and mixed by Justine Paradis
Edited by Taylor Quimby
Our staff also includes Marina Henke, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt.
Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio
Music by bomull, Rebecca Mardall, Cody High, and Blue Dot Sessions.
Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.
Audio Transcript
Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
Nate Hegyi: This is Outside/In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I am Nate Hegyi, joined today by our producer Justine Paradis. Hey Justine.
Justine Paradis: Hey Nate. Uh, question.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah.
Justine Paradis: How do you approach organizing your closet?
Nate Hegyi: Well – [laughs]. That’s a great question because that assumes that the clothes are making it into the closet as opposed to sitting in a hamper because I can never, I hate the chore, I hate putting away laundry. But when I do, it is organized: long sleeve shirts, short sleeve shirts, uh, pants on top, folded. Socks, underwear – kind of, hopefully folded. Probably not, thrown into a little bin.
MUSIC: la mota, bomull
Justine Paradis: So, I think that this speaks to a theory I've been developing that I wanna lay on you.
Nate Hegyi: ‘Kay.
Justine Paradis: Let me present what I’m calling a geologic theory of wardrobes.
Nate Hegyi: Oooh, geologic theory. Okay.
Justine Paradis: Thinking about your hamper. You’ve got your topsoil — so this is the favorite stuff, the very rich material that you wear on repeat.
Nate Hegyi: Mhm.
Justine Paradis: Hanging up, you’ve got a special occasion range, in the distance, perhaps – your party dresses, your suits.
Nate Hegyi: Yes.
Justine Paradis: But, deeper down, there is a layer of clothing that we try our best not to think about.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah.
Justine Paradis: And these are the things that are always there: the permapile, perhaps we could call it?
Nate Hegyi: Oh! Justine!
Justine Paradis: Do you have any ideas?
Nate Hegyi: That’s so clever. I love that, the permapile!
Justine Paradis: The permapile. These are the clothes we love, so we don’t want to throw them away, but we can’t wear them as they are now because they are in some way broken. They need to be repaired. Do you know what I’m talking about?
Nate Hegyi: Oh yes. I have this amazing orca shirt. It’s a Hawaiian shirt style with orcas all over it. It’s very fun.
Justine Paradis: Cute.
Nate Hegyi: And I love the feel of it. It’s soft and silky. But the buttons were put on terribly. And three of them have fallen off and I've lost them, and so now it just sits, hanging. You know? I look at it and I'm like, I wanna wear you, but I'm being lazy, I guess? I don’t wanna fix you?
Justine Paradis: Yeah. I’m curious what you feel like stops you from fixing it.
Nate Hegyi: Lack of skill. For sure. I don’t actually know how to sew. At one point in my life I think I was taught, and I quickly forgot it.
Justine Paradis: Yeah, very relatable. Absolutely.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah.
Justine Paradis: But what if I could help you bring this back to life, into rotation, and it wouldn’t be – and what if I told you that it wouldn’t be that hard?
Nate Hegyi: Oh I’m all ears. Tell me! Let me fix, fix my shirt!
Justine Paradis: Let’s fix these shirts. This is our subject today: the practice – and sometimes the art – of mending our clothes.
MUSIC: Seahorsing, Rebecca Mardal
Nate Hegyi: We’ve probably all heard the classic sustainability maxim: “Reduce, reuse, recycle.”
Justine Paradis: But is “repair” the missing fourth “r” in that sentence?
Nate Hegyi: So, today on the show, producer Justine Paradis reports on the state of repair, how clothing brands and communities are getting in on it, and how you can get started yourself.
MUSIC SWELL AND OUT
Justine Paradis: This is Outside/In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I’m Justine Paradis.
Emilia Petrarca: I feel like every… November/December especially, it's gift guide season. It's sale season. There's just so much consumption happening.
Justine Paradis: This is Emilia Petrarca, a freelance fashion and culture writer based in Brooklyn. We actually had a class or two together in college. But today, she writes a newsletter called Shop Rat. It’s about how fashion shows up in the real world – like in person, in shops, on the street. And Emilia gets it: fashion is fun.
Emilia Petrarca: Obviously I am a part of that. I am a fan of it. I love a gift guide. Um, I love a sale.
Justine Paradis: But, these days, the pace of consumption is relentless, and exhausting even for the pros.
Emilia Petrarca: And while I do love it, I feel by January that I am just like, oh my God, I cannot go to the post office with another return or shipment… I have like shopping fatigue… I cannot buy anything more.
Justine Paradis: So, Emilia decided to explore a different aspect of fashion coverage. Now, every January on Shop Rat is “Repair Month.”
MUSIC: nackros, bomull
Justine Paradis: She’s reported on things like how to care for cashmere, how to talk to your tailor, or learning a specific sewing skill.
Emilia Petrarca: I think last year one of them for me was like sewing a button on a jacket. It's so easy. But I didn't know how to sew a button. And I hadn't actually taken five minutes to, like, watch a YouTube video. And as a result, this amazing jacket that I love went completely unworn for a year.
MUSIC SWELL
Justine Paradis: The garment industry has a giant carbon footprint. Researchers have found the fashion industry accounts for 10% of global pollution, the second largest industrial source, after aviation. Plenty of brands do a lot of marketing around “sustainability” or “slow fashion” – which are sometimes buzzwords, and sometimes reflect real change. But regardless, the most sustainable garment is always the one you already have in your closet.
So, this is how we’re spending the rest of the show: 8 tips to lengthen the life of your clothes and to get the practice of repair into the rhythm of your life.
MUSIC SWELL AND FADE
TIP #1: do a closet audit.
Emilia Petrarca: Block off an afternoon where you go through your closet.
Justine Paradis: Unearth that geologic perma-pile of laundry, and do an inventory of everything that hasn’t seen the light of day, maybe in years.
Emilia Petrarca: Reacquaint yourself with what you have. Um, and that is really fun for me. Like doing a dress up afternoon where I put on music and try on everything in my closet and just being like, oh, right! I have all the things that I think I lack. I've also bought like ten of the same thing, like I need to stop. I have sort of shopping amnesia.
Justine Paradis: As you go, make a repair pile. What aren’t you wearing just because it needs a simple fix?
Emilia Petrarca: Instead of doing, like, giveaway toss, like, think hard about what you can give another life to.
Justine Paradis: Side note here real quick about the giveaway pile: only about a fifth of clothes that we give to donation bins ends up being reworn. Most donated clothing ends up in landfills in African countries, and even if it does find its way into the secondhand market, the flood of used clothing undermines local economies across the globe.
So, all the more reason to shift at least some of our focus onto that repair pile.
MUSIC: Confusing, Cody High
Emilia Petrarca: I just sort of try to think ahead, because a whole other season will go by where you're like, oh, I should have taken those boots to the cobbler. So, yeah. Take a second to take stock of your wardrobe.
MUSIC SWELL AND FADE
Justine Paradis: TIP #2: Sometimes, your clothes need something very simple. A wash.
Emilia Petrarca: It's funny because, like, I love clothes, I work in fashion, but I'm a huge slob... I actually don't take very good care of my stuff.
Justine Paradis: It might not seem like it, but getting good at laundry is also a repair skill. And Emilia decided it was high time to hone hers.
Emilia Petrarca: As a slob, I have become a sort of master stain remover.
Justine Paradis: In one newsletter, titled “A Slob’s Guide to Stains,” Emilia offers a few tricks.
Emilia Petrarca: Dish soap, baking soda, cornstarch. Those are your best friends. Um, cornstarch will get out oil stains.
Justine Paradis: For that cornstarch thing, leave it on oil stains for at least 15 minutes, but the longer, the better. Baby powder and baking soda also work well.
Emilia Petrarca: Dish soap is good, like, in a pinch. I used it the other day when I spilled fish oil on myself.
Justine Paradis: And when it comes to blood stains, Emilia has a weird but great tip. Apparently, the best on-the-go tool is saliva.
MUSIC: Confusing, Cody High
Specifically, the enzymes in your own saliva can break down your own blood, according to her source.
Laundry. Kinda metal.
MUSIC SWELL AND FADE
Justine Paradis: Tip #3: When you do bust out the needle and thread, start small.
Dante Gonzalez: Pick a small one… I love an accomplishable goal.
Justine Paradis: This advice comes from Dante Zagros Gonzalez, costume designer and repair specialist at the clothing brand Toast. They say: pick something you can do in under two hours, in one sitting.
Dante Gonzalez: If it's about to go, that's a great time. And something really small, like a square inch or less, is what I would recommend… Don't tackle the 300 moth holes in one sweater that you're going to Swiss darn all at once. Don't do that one first! Pick like a shirt… Something hearty that's not going to fall apart if you touch it.
Justine Paradis: A lot of the fundamental skills here are quite easy, but tricky to describe in a podcast. So pull up YouTube and find a video on darning or sashiko – both techniques which involve pretty basic sewing chops, like over-under weaving, or running stitches.
MUSIC: Feisty and Tacky (cello), Blue Dot Sessions
Justine Paradis: The goal here is to give yourself that confidence boost right off the bat.
Dante Gonzalez: I think it's a story that people tell themselves that they're not capable of doing crafty things. I think I hear that probably the most – you know, ‘oh my gosh, I see your work. It's so beautiful. I just, I'm not crafty. I'm not creative…’ And the catch-22 is that if you don't think that you can then you won't.
MUSIC FADE
Justine Paradis: But the reality is that sometimes a garment might need a little more help. And that brings us to tip #4.
[ambi rise]
Steve Foss: Come on in there young lady!
Justine Paradis: Don’t hesitate to get help from the pros.
Steve Foss: What you got going, girl?
Amy Smith: Okay, so don't be upset. I did try to glue it back myself.
Steve Foss: OMG girlfriend.
Amy Smith: I didn't know, I was new in town.
Steve Foss: That’s okay, I'm only kidding.
Justine Paradis: This fall, when I needed to replace the soles on my black ankle boots, I didn’t try to do it myself. I found a cobbler.
Steve Foss: Heels, heels, and more heels.
Justine Paradis: Steve Foss operates Maine Shoe Repair out of his garage, and he’s been at it almost 40 years.
Steve Foss: People say you're the best in town. And I say, well, I'm also, you know, I'm the only one. I'm also the worst in town, so I'm torn. But I said I'm a very optimistic person, so I'm going to go with the best.
Justine Paradis: It is true that Steve is the only one in town, and depending on where you live, finding a repair shop like this might not be easy. There are far fewer cobblers than there once were, and no one’s waiting in the wings to take over Steve’s operation. But the twenty bucks it cost to resole my shoes was a lot cheaper than buying a new pair – and chatting with Steve felt great. Steve even handed a couple customers a pair of scissors, inviting them to cut some kale from his garden.
MUSIC: Cherry Heath, Blue Dot Sessions
Brie (sp?): oh!
Steve Foss: I’m trying to offload.
Brie (sp?): Yeah. I mean I’ll eat some.
Steve Foss: You eat kale? You can put it in smoothies, it’s really good. [fade] or you can…
Justine Paradis: There’s research that suggests we get a mental health boost from interactions. Relationships like baristas, exercise instructors, or familiar faces on the commute. The kinds of light, friendly interactions I watched over a dozen times in the hour I spent in Steve’s garage.
Victoria: I'm 73, and I was a ballet dancer.
Steve Foss: 73?! I'm 70. [groans]
Victoria: I did ballet for 37 years.
Justine Paradis: Oh my gosh.
Steve Foss: I just wore the slippers.
…
Neil Pearlman: I was, uh, reached out to you about getting some shoes shined for my wedding.
Steve Foss: I remember that.
Neil Pearlman: Yes.
Steve Foss: Congratulations by the way.
Neil Pearlman: Thank you. They're just these. I just bought them.
Steve Foss: Oh, those are purty.
Justine Paradis: More tips on clothing repair, coming up on Outside/In after the break.
Steve Foss: When do you need them?
Neil Pearlman: By the end of the weekend would be great. [fade]
BREAK
Justine Paradis: This is Outside/In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I’m Justine Paradis. Today we’ve been sharing tips to help us cultivate the practice of repairing our clothes, keeping them in our closets and out of the landfill.
MUSIC: Sudden Courier (Information Oriented), Blue Dot Sessions
But to do that, there is something that we have to contend with. Clothes are sometimes too cheap.
Arounna Khounnoraj: I sometimes get negative comments. Like, if I'm repairing a sock, I'll hear somebody say, oh, why bother? Just buy a new pair… you know, if you could buy a new pair of socks for like, under $5, would you spend an hour fixing your sock?
Justine Paradis: That’s Arounna Khounnoraj, a textile artist in Toronto, Canada. I imagine a lot of us relate to that sentiment. Like: this thing is so cheap, it’s not even worth fixing, I’ll just buy another. But cheap clothes are a major contributor to why the garment industry has such a huge carbon footprint.
There’s data from 2014 that shows the average person in North America buys 35 pounds of clothing every year, which translates to 64 t-shirts or 16 pairs of jeans. Another study in the UK indicated that most purchases are worn just seven times total. Some of that is manufactured by trends.
Arounna Khounnoraj: This idea of constantly like changing your clothing per season and things like that.
Justine Paradis: But some of it is because cheap clothes simply aren’t built to last. Some fall apart after just one wash. Which is why spending more on higher quality stuff can save you money in the long run.
Arounna Khounnoraj: It's going to have a longer shelf life. It's not this thing of, you know, kind of throwing it away and wasting it.
Justine Paradis: So here’s tip #5 – when it is time to buy something new, consider investing in clothes that can actually be fixed. Perhaps, buying from companies that will fix them for you.
Dante Gonzalez: I went to university for costume design, which is how I spend about half of my time now, so I probably spend about half of it costuming in the theater and opera world, and half of it in fashion production and repair.
Justine Paradis: This again is Dante Gonzalez. Dante works as a repair specialist for Toast, a UK-based brand with branches in New York, and whose sweaters I covet.
Dante Gonzalez: Probably the most common repair that any person will get in, Toast or not, is a pants crotch. It is the truth. It gets the most wear and tear.
Justine Paradis: Dante offers weekly drop-in sessions at the shop, where customers can swing by and be guided through a mend or drop something off to be fixed.
Dante Gonzalez: I did fix the cuffs on a coat once.… It was a navy coat, and I did a light blue darn around the cuffs on the rim of the cuffs and on the pockets as well. That came out really beautifully.
MUSIC: Leatherbound, Blue Dot Sessions
Justine Paradis: But it’s not just brands on the more boutique-y end. The outdoor gear industry has actually really led the way here, especially Patagonia. Lots of brands have repair departments or sometimes secondhand resale platforms. They include Eileen Fisher, H&M, Levi’s, L.L. Bean, Arc’teryx. Nordstrom claims to be “the largest employer of tailors in North America.” Even the global retail giant Uniqlo has a repair department now, at least for some products.
Sonali Diddi: And why are the brands, you know, moving in this space?
Justine Paradis: When I spoke with Sonali Diddi, a researcher on sustainability in the fashion industry at Colorado State University, she said —
Sonali Diddi: Policy is making them move in this space.
Justine Paradis: In other words, these brand repair departments are not necessarily coming from the goodness of their corporate hearts. New EU regulations went into effect in fall 2025. Which will eventually require textile producers to share more data with the public and to pay for textile waste: collecting, sorting, and recycling. A similar law also passed in California in 2024.
Sonali Diddi: So I think that seems to be one of the major drivers for brands saying, oh, maybe we need to invest in the repair ecosystem.
Justine Paradis: Point is, making repair a priority isn’t just a personal choice – it’s also a matter of policy.
MUSIC SWELL AND FADE
Justine Paradis: Tip #6: Turn repair into an art project. Repair doesn’t have to be invisible. Sometimes, the mend itself can be beautiful.
Arounna Khourronaj: Every time I post a workshop with visible mending, it sells out way quicker than any other workshop. There's definitely an interest in it.
Justine Paradis: That’s textile artist Arounna Khounnoraj again. Arounna wrote a book a few years ago on something called “visible mending.”
Arounna Khounnoraj: The book Visible Mending was sort of a rebellion against the things that I kind of grew up with.
Justine Paradis: Arounna’s family immigrated to Canada from Laos after the Vietnam War, and her mother worked as a seamstress.
Arounna Khourronaj: So my mother would make her clothes, and she would also mend our clothes as well. And there was a real stigma with being poor. And so whenever I would get a hole in my clothing, my mother would kind of painstakingly mend it invisibly so that you couldn't tell that something has been mended. And when I started having my own children, and I was mending my husband's jeans and other things that he had, I felt like, you know, I wanted it to be visible.
Justine Paradis: Instead of hiding the repair, visible mending is about highlighting it.
MUSIC: Preston and Carle, Blue Dot Sessions
Justine Paradis: Like: using colorful stitches that really show up against the fabric, elaborate embroidery over a stain, or quilting fun patches over holes. There’s also a style of Japanese embroidery called sashiko, traditionally used on fishermen’s jackets, and that a lot of people use to mend their denim now.
Arounna Khourronaj: I wanted it to be a celebration of the hole. I didn't want it to be like this thing that I was trying to hide. I always felt like the holes themselves were kind of a vestige of that person… how they used it, how they wore it. It was almost kind of a remnant of that person in some way.
MUSIC SWELL AND FADE
Justine Paradis: Tip #7: embrace the “repair mindset.”
Repair isn’t passive. It does ask us for our resources: like, our time, attention, sometimes our money. But that doesn’t have to be the way that we think about it.
Emilia Petrarca: I guess another thing I would say is, like, it's not that hard. Like, everyone's always like, how do you have time to, like, hand wash all your sweaters? I'm like, it takes ten minutes.
Justine Paradis: That’s fashion writer Emilia Petrarca again. At first, a new chore might feel insurmountable. But once you do it once or twice, and you have your tools ready – in this case, a bucket and some wool detergent – you can do it.
Emilia Petrarca: I just sort of take a deep breath and tell myself, like, if I can just spend 15 minutes doing this before I go to bed tonight, like I will thank myself for the rest of the season because it's, it's not – number one: it's not that hard. And number two, your clothes are not as dirty as you think, like… you don't need to be washing your stuff all the time. Especially not sweaters. Like, if you just wash them once or twice a season, like, you're good. And um, so yeah, I guess my, my advice is suck it up.
Justine Paradis: [laughs]
Emilia Petrarca: And, uh, just bite the bullet because it's not that hard and you'll feel really good about it when you do it.
MUSIC: Our Fingers Cold, Blue Dot Sessions
Justine Paradis: Another thing is: mending feels good. A lot of people are very aware of overconsumption, and there’s a real hunger for an alternative.
My repair skill of choice these days is darning. When I finish darning a hole in a sweater, I admit: I get a little ego boost. I show it off, posting before and after photos on Instagram. And I’ll be honest: I love the compliments.
Darning is also this lovely balance of relaxing and stimulating – most of the time I do it while chilling out and watching comfort TV. Yet, each repair is a little puzzle, almost always at the perfect level of difficulty. I have the basic skills, but because it’s a little different each time, it stretches me.
And I find that every time I put my time and attention on a piece of clothing, I’m deepening my relationship with it. Maybe that sounds over-the-top, but clothes can be emotional. Like, think about it: the scarf a friend knitted for you. Your mother’s dress. The t-shirt you got on a trip. Those jeans you wore on that first date.
But because the world is just tough on clothes, it’s likely that we’ll end up mending our favorite stuff, over and over again. And this is where the repair mindset really deepens.
Dante Gonzalez: My dad, who is an engineer, told me about this sort of principle of engineering where once you fix something, the next weakest link is going to go and it's probably going to go fairly quickly.
Justine Paradis: Dante Gonzalez again.
Dante Gonzalez: Well, I think it, it comes down to some of my fundamental values of being very, very stubborn and also very soft at the same time of like, I can fix it, I will fix it, it will break again, I will fix it again… I can do hard things. And I can do them gently and be kind to myself and others in the world, while also being very persistent that that change can happen… It is a very optimistic mindset and not a nihilistic one, I would say.
[repair cafe ambi]
MUSIC FADE
Justine Paradis: And this brings me to my last tip: find community.
Vrylena Olney: What is your hand sewing familiarity?
Ely Spencer: Uh, basically zero.
Vrylena Olney: I love that. Alright, let's do it…
Justine Paradis: This is tape I recorded at Ripe for Repair, a monthly meetup where I live in Portland, Maine. It’s a spin-off of a repair cafe — which is kinda what it sound like. People bring in their broken things, and there are other people there to help fix stuff.
In one corner of the room, there’s a line of sewing machines, each operated by a volunteer. At this one, Vrylena Olney walks Ely Spencer with a hole in his pants.
Justine Paradis: Are these your jeans?
Ely Spencer: Yeah.
Justine Paradis: …What was the issue?
Ely Spencer: Big old hole in ‘em. And I'm, I'm clueless and need an expert to to fix them for me, so it's cool.
Vrylena Olney: Amazing that I've become the expert here. I find that kind of hilarious.
Justine Paradis: It’s not just clothes being repaired here. Another sewing machine is being operated by a volunteer whose day job is timber framing – and that afternoon, she repaired a stool used for blueberry picking, which is just about the most Maine thing I have ever heard.
Jessica Milneil: That’s what I did. I fixed that stool. And then I sat on it a bunch. I was like, this is gonna work for some hard blueberry picking!
Justine Paradis: There’s also a bike repair station. And an electronics zone.
Sheldon Bird: Burnt resistor.
Justine Paradis: Where guys with headlamps are examining a busted Roku.
Sheldon Bird: I think it's going to turn out to be something like 0.77 ohms…
Ali Mann: Does anybody here want, like, coffee or seltzer or snacks?
Justine Paradis: Ali Mann is the organizer here. She’s spending the afternoon buzzing around the room, greeting newcomers, asking folks if they need anything.
Ali Mann: I think there are some like very basic, like, fundamental reasons why this feels like a good idea… Creating a space for people to be with each other. Keep each other company. Help each other out in like a low stakes way that, um, really has the potential to bring in people across lines of difference, you know, across across race, across class, intergenerational thing, because everybody has stuff.
Justine Paradis: Once upon a time, people may have learned skills like these in home economics or shop class. But both teachers and enrollment in this kind of education have sharply declined, and a lot of people don’t feel empowered to fix their things — or it doesn’t occur to them to do so in the first place.
Ali Mann: I don't know, I think we're trying to sort of create a space where people can practice these values of using the skills that you have to benefit your community and receiving help from other people and like working those muscles and getting good at those things all outside the market. So nobody's paying for anything. This is not about money. This is about like enjoying each other and enjoying each other's skills and supporting each other.
MUSIC: Sudden Courier, Blue Dot Sessions
Justine Paradis: Everyone is here to repair stuff. And keeping things out of the landfill on its own is worthwhile. But there’s more going on than that.
Maybe it sounds a little pap, but at the repair cafe, people are gathering in person, problem-solving, often with strangers, to fix stuff in community. Practicing this repair mindset.
Things break, but we can fix them—and we can fix them, together. Not to put too fine a point on it, but what’s being repaired here might be way more than stuff.
MUSIC SWELL
Nate Hegyi: Alright, that is it for Outside/In. And it’s pretty challenging to adequately describe some of these repairs – but it’s really worth seeing how they look, because some of them are absolutely gorgeous. We’ve shared some photos on our website and social media – we’re @outsideinradio on all the places.
Justine Paradis: Also, check out the show notes. We’ll share links on how to find a repair cafe—or how to start your own—and places to learn mending skills.
Nate Hegyi: This episode was produced, reported, and mixed by Justine Paradis and edited by our executive producer, Taylor Quimby. I’m your host, Nate Hegyi. Our team also includes Marina Henke, Felix Poon, and Jessica Hunt. NHPR’s director of on-demand audio is Rebecca Lavoie.
Justine Paradis: Music in this episode came from bomull, Rebecca Mardall, Cody High, and Blue Dot Sessions.
Nate Hegyi: Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.