We’re all adults here. Can we acknowledge up front that the internet is pretty weird these days? Too often, online life can mostly consist of a firehose-to-the-face of grim global news (looking at you, climate report) and a flurry of aggressive social media posturing (hi there, meme posted by contentious family member!), all of which is emotionally difficult to process when interspersed with photos of your friends’ engagements, babies, and dog outfits.
It’s a real rollercoaster, you guys.
However: credit where credit is due. For the tinkerers among us, it is a gift to be alive in the age of the internet, where countless grizzled dads have made their screen debuts on YouTube fixing a dripping faucet, changing a car headlight, or properly venting a microwave through a kitchen wall. (Thank you, repair dads of YouTube. Your wobbly cameras and poor sound quality belie a true wealth of institutional repair knowledge – which, frankly, is guiding the next generation through basically all domestic crises.)
Beyond this unquestionably impressive cinematic stockpile, the internet has another boon to offer DIY-ers: comprehensive online repair guides, where a little browsing can reveal a how-to for almost anything imaginable.
If you’re spiritually fatigued from the internet’s avalanche of wildly variant content, but not ready to disengage from scrolling quite yet, here are some starter sites to peruse for inspiration regarding real world things to (eventually) get your hands on.
IFixIt.com declares itself “The free repair guide for everything, written by everyone.” The wiki-based site offers step-by-step repair guides for “every thing,” organized into categories ranging from apparel to specific electronics to vehicles and more. IFixIt.com also offers intricate teardowns of contemporary gadgets and, if all that wasn’t enough, some pretty rad repair writing, including this story of a mom who dragged her toilet into her front yard and destroyed it in front of her children. (Note: the toilet detail is not even the focus of the story, but is a pretty amazing plot point. The whole post is very worth a read.)
A challenge to IFixIt: if the former site does not, in fact, have “every thing” listed, Fix-It Club just might. With the motto “Maintenance is cheaper than repair!,” Fix-It Club offers over 250 alphabetically organized repair guides, broken down by item name (seasonally topical: holiday light repair). These guides are also grouped into general categories in a column to the left of each page, including the enigmatic “Exercise and Leisure Repairs.”
Whoever titled this site was very into function. The name says it all – turn here for forums on repairing your fridge/freezer, trash compactor, washer, dryer, microwave, and more. Bonus: a small search bar under “Find Parts Here” on the right margin of the page will reveal a comprehensive parts inventory for aforementioned appliances of all different brands.
If there’s one thing more Portlanders have waited in ridiculous lines for than Timber’s games or brunch, it may very well be the REI scratch-and-dent sale. Living in the PNW compels possession of gear-y things like tents, hiking boots, and camp stoves, which are expensive to purchase and replace. Those who love a bargain on quality outdoor gear will surely love Backpacker’s assemblage of articles on gear repair and maintenance, including such hits as “How to Buy and Repair Sleeping Bags” and the all-important “How to Wash Your Outdoor Clothes.”
These sites can all be found on Portland Repair Finder’s resource page, alongside more DIY resources such as in-person classes and events in the community. And if the DIY force is not strong with you – never fear. The Portland metro region is an area with no shortage of unique and talented repair people, as the ever-growing listings on our homepage map and resource page can attest, who are more than willing to fix your stuff and take your money.