The Life Changing Magic of Fixing It

By Jeff McGut

Have you thrown a bag full of clothes recently? Or an old electronic gadget? An old headphone maybe? Little did I know that these items, having lost their value to us, would bring us more joy and quite a bit of cash. The world was built on ingenuity and making more of stuff long past their use. But the throw-away culture encourages us to change, upgrade and buy as soon as possible. 
This is our story of how we discovered the fun (and money) from fixing old items for new customers.

Explore the joys of mending and repairing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Luminos
• Release date: Apr 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393580003

Book preview

Our Throwaway Society

Once upon a time, I had a garage. It was meant to be a home for my precious car, protecting my most prized possession from the atrocities of nature and from late night drunken escapades of fellow humans. Then, in a inspired moment of increasing space utilization, we decided to use the area in front and on the sides of the car for some storage space. It was no big deal.

Soon we ran out of space. So we took the logical step of buying some racks to stack stuff one over the other. We actually felt very smart. We were making such a good use of the space we had.

But we ran out of space again (yes, the story gets more interesting!). So in a final act of desperation, we decided to move the car to the street and instead use the garage as a storage. In a single day, our car lost its beloved home (if there was ever an autobiography of a car, that day would be among the darkest) and our garage was given a new life purpose of storing unwanted items.

Before we knew, our garage was full of stuff - clothes, books, electronics, utensils, toys and lots and lots of paper. It seemed like a marketers dream come true - I had been coerced to purchase, purchase and purchase - driven by creative ads, enticing coupons and 'Are-You-Crazy-To-Miss-It?!' sales.

Over the years, the garage converted from a store to a maze of stacked cardboard boxes with permanent ink markers to indicate what they contained. Kids used to play hide and seek in it, but after a near-fall of a box on one of my kids, the garage became an unsafe, adult-only zone.

In a few years, it had become a constant source of argument between Niki, my wife, and me. The mess was clogging the house and was a sore sight whenever I looked at it. Our beautiful home and its carefree energy was being drained by stuff we never used, stocked in boxes we wouldn't open and in a garage we couldn't use.

No wonder self storage is such a booming industry. 

Then things changed. Last year, we celebrated a $20 Christmas (that led to my first book - 'The $20 Christmas: How We Had a Debt Free Christmas'). My Christmas