Reduce, reuse, repair, learn and belong were elements of the Peoria Repair Café’s latest event Saturday at the North Branch Library.
Repair cafés have popped up around the world since the first known one opened in 2009 in Amsterdam. Jennifer Brady and Nikki Merz Andrews formed Peoria’s about a year ago, with their first event in October 2025.
They typically host local events every three months, when volunteers can use their expertise in sewing, leather work, garden tool maintenance, IT, bicycle repair, appliances, electronics, etc. to help people fix their possessions for free. They may even teach someone to do further maintenance and upkeep. Participants also can swap DIY supplies or clothes.
“There’s some basic things about mechanics that not everybody’s gonna know, and the user manual doesn’t tell you that,” Brady said. “It’s just kind of learning about how things work.”
The Peoria Repair Café [PRC] has at least 10 steady volunteers who regularly help teach and repair at events, and eight or nine new volunteers showed up Saturday. Three volunteers perform the day-to-day tasks of the organization that runs off donations.
Reuse
Peggy West, an Illinois Extension master naturalist at the University of Illinois, ran a DIY materials exchange table Saturday where people could exchange or take arts and crafts supplies, fabric, yarn and even a complete Cat in the Hat costume that West was able to give away to a family.
Like many PRC volunteers, West collects things that are no longer useful to her and others. Instead of dumping them in a landfill or polluting waterways, she wants to find new homes for the materials: An afterschool program, the elderly to keep them occupied, a child to make a craft or even Enough Stuff thrift store and swap house in East Peoria.
“Why should we keep it in our closets when we could get it into the hands of somebody who can use it?” West said.
Enough Stuff Vice President Barb Podbielski loves secondhand, repairing and finding purposes for old things.
“I just want everybody to get as much use out of what they have, or if you don’t need it anymore, pass it on,” Podbielski said. “Because there are so many people who are looking to just reuse things and keep things out of landfills and give them a use again.”
Repair and learn
Peoria Repair Cafe [PRC] hopes to not only repair people’s goods but teach people how to fix them. Sewer and weaver Jennie Hawkey fixes or teaches depending on the person.
“Some people have had some experience with sewing before, and so I can just kind of guide them,” Hawkey said. “Other people, they’re really kind of nervous about it. They haven’t done it or don’t have the idea [of] how the machine works, and so, we split it up.”
Hawkey loves making things with her hands and teaching others.
“I believe very strongly in passing on these [abilities] to work and make things [and] to thrift your own clothing and articles, and people just really want to learn,” Hawkey said. “A lot of people have sewing machines, but they don’t know how to use them. They just haven’t had that passed onto them.”
For Deb Hanes, who repairs costume jewelry, the café is not just about teaching others but herself, too. She made a list throughout the day of supplies she might need next time, or skills she needs to brush up on.
Reduce and belong
Illinois Extension Master gardner and naturalist May Bach’s table instructed people how to clean their gardening tools to keep them working properly and best prepare them for winter.
“Volunteering is good for your soul,” said Bach. “Not only that but it also helps you meet new people, have new experiences…It’s just a fun way to share a little knowledge that you might have, [you] learn something new all the time and you get to talk with great people. People that are interested in knowing more.”
Bach hopes participants walk away understanding how simple it can be to take care of something rather than throwing it away for a new one since there is only so much space people want or can dedicate to old stuff and only so much money they have for the new.
“We are a disposable society as they’ve been saying for the last couple decades, and it’s really true,” Bach said. “We buy new batteries, but we don’t necessarily think about what we’re doing when we throw an old battery into the garbage.
“We often will have something that gets a little shabby, or it doesn’t look as good as it used to. And instead of fixing it or cleaning it or trying to make it still usable, we’ll pitch it and get another one, and there’s only so much [space] in the landfill to hold those things.”
Nicki Tucker, who volunteered for her first repair café Saturday as a leather worker, thinks the repair café could be a real movement if PRC can get enough volunteers and people coming to the events.
“It’s the right way to go to help out the planet and the situation that the planet’s in,” said Tucker.
Jamie Berman went to the last PRC event in May as a participant. She loved the community — partially made up of people she already knew — and thought repairing, reusing and reducing landfill waste were great ideas.
“I think it’s a good way to go beyond the basic things like recycling and composting [and to] give a new life to things, find new things, meet other people that are like minded that have similar interests,” Berman said.
She volunteered in the clothes swap area Saturday, and wants to keep coming and do more. She needs additional skills, though, like sewing, which another volunteer was teaching her Saturday.
“It’s a really great community experience,” Berman said. “Why would you not come?”
PRC will meet again on Sept. 12 at River City Labs at 7916 N. Hale Ave., Peoria and on Oct. 24 at the Peoria County Health Department’s Community Room at 2116 N. Sheridan Road, Peoria.
To volunteer or learn more about PRC, visit its website: peoriarepaircafe.org.
