Fix It, Don’t Toss It: Choosing Repair Over Replacement in a Throwaway World

I’ve always tried to live a frugal life — not out of scarcity, but out of principle. We live in a world that increasingly sees devices and goods as disposable. If something breaks, you’re expected to toss it and buy the next iteration. That mindset never sat well with me.

And lately, I’ve noticed something strange. The louder the talk around sustainability and climate responsibility gets, the more obvious it becomes that many people doing the talking don’t actually walk the walk. Meanwhile, people like me — who’ve been quietly fixing and reusing and repurposing for years — are already doing the work they’re just starting to “awareness campaign” about.

🔧 A Speaker, a Broken Port, and a Bit of Solder

Take this example: I had a Creative Labs speaker that worked perfectly until someone bent the micro-USB charging port. Once the battery died, it was effectively a brick — or a future addition to some landfill. But I opened it up, carefully inspected the damage, found an identical replacement port online, desoldered the broken one, and installed the new part. A few bucks, a bit of time, and that speaker is still playing music today.

It might seem like a small thing. But enough small things add up.

💻 Dead Laptops, New Life

At my workplace, we occasionally have laptops deemed unfit for continued business use — cracked screens, missing keys, dead touchpads. Most are considered e-waste. I offer to take them. With a little work, I’ve repurposed these machines into emulation devices, adblockers, media centers, or general-purpose PCs. Maybe they’re not perfect, but they’re still perfectly useful.

When you know how to work with what you have — especially when you know how to fix things — “broken” starts to look a lot like “potential.”

🏍️ From Motorcycles to Garden Tools: The Pop-Up Garage Story

Even outside tech, this mindset shows up. I had a pop-up garage for our Honda Navis that started tearing with time. Most people would’ve thrown it out and bought something new. Instead, I picked up a cheap tarp, a few bungee cords, and some specialized repair tape for the tent fabric. Patched it up, and it kept going.

Eventually, I did replace it with a new one — the Navis deserved an upgrade! — but I didn’t toss the old one. I repurposed it as a storage shelter for garden tools and supplies. One fix turned into multiple uses. That’s the kind of domino effect that corporate product cycles never account for.

🧰 A Career of Repair

I once worked a job where one of my main responsibilities was refurbishing computers for online resale. Sometimes that just meant wiping drives and reinstalling Windows. But often, I’d come across dead motherboards — bulging capacitors, power issues, failure to post. I’d get out the soldering iron, replace the bad caps, and bring those boards back to life. We didn’t just recycle — we revived.

That job wasn’t just work to me. It was a reminder that most “junk” isn’t junk. It’s just waiting for someone with time, tools, and care.

🧠 The Philosophy Behind It

I don’t fix things just to save money — though I do. I do it because I believe in making things last. In using the full life of an object before replacing it. In respecting the materials and labor that went into it. And in pushing back, in my own quiet way, against a world that wants me to be a passive consumer instead of an active participant.

I’ve been doing this long before tech giants added “green” badges to their websites. And I’ll keep doing it long after the next wave of slogans fade.

So if you're ever unsure whether it's worth fixing something — it probably is. Even if it doesn't work out, you'll learn something. You'll build a skill. And you’ll make one less contribution to a landfill filled with perfectly fixable things.