If you’re skilled at sharpening knives, scissors, garden tools and more and are willing to volunteer your time—you are needed. Residents of Granby are welcome to bring household items to the Suffield Repair Cafe for free repair by volunteers.
Suffield hosts Repair Cafes each quarter, open to Suffield residents and those from surrounding towns like Granby. There are 13 volunteer fixers who sharpen dull scissors, knives and garden tools and repair household items, including lamps and small appliances, wooden furniture and cabinet doors, ceramics, jewelry clasps and links, bicycles, and clothing with ripped hems, missing buttons and nonworking zippers.
Currently, Sustainable Suffield, which runs the Repair Cafes, needs more volunteer sharpeners. “Lately, our Repair Cafes have been overwhelmed by requests for sharpening,” according to Sustainable Suffield co-chair Anna Kristin Daub-Murphy. She said the group has two volunteer sharpeners, one being Granby resident Jim Baker.
Sustainable Suffield provides the volunteer fixers with homemade muffins, cookies and coffee throughout the day along with a sandwich lunch, Daub-Murphy noted.
Sustainable Suffield’s next Repair Cafe is Saturday, Sept. 27, at the Suffield Senior Center on 145 Bridge Street, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. To volunteer as a sharpener, email Daub-Murphy at sustainablesuffield@SuffieldCT.gov