2025 Dates: February 23, April 27, June 29, August 24, October 26 and December 28
11 - 3 PM
Repair Café is a free community event where we bring our beloved but broken items, and together, with volunteer Repair Coaches, we fix them. Broken items include small appliances, lamps, clothing, frames, chairs and more.
Currently we are looking for "Repair Coaches" to guide people in fixing all kinds of things. Repair coaches bring their own tools and supplies and offer repairs at no cost. If you would like to volunteer, the commitment can be on a per-event basis.
Contact RepairCafeGardiner@gmail.com for more information.
History of Gardiner's Repair Café
In February 2014 Wendy Toman (who was running Gardiner's Transfer Station) partnered with Nicole Lane, Director of the Gardiner Library, to organize the second Repair Cafe in the Hudson Valley--and the first to be held at a library. Also one of the few to meet on Sunday. In 2017, Wendy passed the torch to Ana Linneman, who nurtured a caring group of repairers and built it up beautifully. After the world shut down from COVID, Holly Shader reopened Gardiner's Repair Café in August of 2021. Today, Holly Shader is the Repair Café organizer for Gardiner and New Paltz. She remains involved because "it checks off so many boxes for me: strengthens community, extends the useful life of our belongings, changes the relationship we have with our "stuff", and it's fun. At some point during every Café I pause to appreciate the generosity, creativity, skill, and experience in the room. There is so much collaboration and learning going on, what's not to like?"
Comments from past cafés:
Perfect service and my chair was fixed!
Thank you - so nice to be able to use my magnifier again
You guys are amazing! Please keep it up.
This was wonderful - to talk about repairing family history and get pants repaired. Thank you!
My family clock needed a longer cord. Awesome, was done - Thank you!
Everyone so pleasant and very helpful!! Thank you so much!
So helpful - arrived 15 minutes before closing and they kindly helped us & fixed our lamp - all with in 15 minutes no less! Thank you so much!