Somewhere in a closet in Ramsey County there is a toaster that only browns one side of the bread, a lamp with a loose connection, and a vacuum cleaner that gave up mid-rug. On Saturday, October 24, the county would like you to bring them to the Oxford Community Center at 270 Lexington Parkway North in Saint Paul, where a room full of volunteers with repair skills will help you take them apart, figure out what went wrong, and, with luck, put them back together working.
The Fix-It Clinic runs from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and is free. You can bring up to three items. What the county asks in return is that you stay with your item and participate: the point is not a drop-off repair counter but a guided lesson, with a volunteer walking you through the disassembly and troubleshooting so that the next time something breaks you have a fighting chance on your own.
The program accepts small household appliances, clothing, electronics, mobile devices and more. A list of suggested candidates includes blenders, fans, lamps, flashlights, hair dryers, remote controls, paper shredders, sewing machines, steam mops, stereos, toaster ovens, toys and antique radios. Everything has to be something you can carry in yourself, which rules out dehumidifiers, large appliances and cars. The county is also explicit that it cannot take hemming or alteration requests for clothing and textiles, and that there is no guarantee an item will be fixed or that volunteers will have time to get to everything you brought. Bring your own tools if you have them, the thinking being that you learn best on your own equipment; the fixers bring tools too.
What happens when a repair fails is part of the clinic's honesty. You are responsible for disposing of anything that cannot be saved, just as you were before you walked in. But the county frames the clinics around three goals that do not depend on a successful repair: teaching troubleshooting and basic repair skills, building community connections, and keeping repairable objects out of the trash.
The clinics are not a new experiment. Ramsey County's program began in 2015, according to reporting by the Roseville Reporter, and has since become a fixture of the county's environmental health calendar, rotating through libraries, community centers and the county's Environmental Center in Roseville, which opened on April 1 and now hosts a monthly clinic alongside a recycling wall, drive-thru and reuse room. Daniel Schmidt, the county's division manager of environmental health, told the Reporter that the Roseville facility was popular because it was built with community input.
The people doing the fixing are the heart of it. Schmidt described them as, in many cases, retired engineers or people who had a hobby that moved them into a space where they had the knowledge and ability to take something apart, identify what was wrong, fix it and put it back together. When a volunteer gets stuck, others gather around the table to work the problem together. "All of these fixers would probably say that their ability to fix things has grown exponentially since they started doing" the clinics, Schmidt said. Attendees at a recent Roseville clinic brought in vacuums, lamps and clothes, among other things.
The clinics also have a sibling. Ramsey County has partnered with Mobile Menders, the program founded by Michelle Ooley, on a Mend-It Clinic that focuses on clothing repair, an outgrowth of the same idea that a broken thing is usually a fixable thing. The county has additionally produced a repair video series in which Fix-It Clinic volunteers demonstrate simple repairs and maintenance of everyday items for people who cannot make it to a clinic in person.
This particular clinic lands in the heart of the historic Rondo neighborhood. The Oxford Community Center is home to the Jimmy Lee Recreation Center and the Great River Water Park. The water park was known as Oxford Community Pool until a 2009 remodeling and expansion, and the neighboring rec center and ball fields carry the name of Jimmy Lee, who moved to Saint Paul in the early 1920s, worked at the Hallie Q. Brown Center, played baseball avidly and went on to umpire softball for the city before becoming the first African American to umpire a Big Ten baseball game. The softball fields were converted in 2013 into a modern turf complex.
It is a fitting setting for an event built on the premise that things worth keeping are worth opening up and looking inside. The county's 2026 schedule continues after October with a clinic on December 5 at Our Lady of Guadalupe. For the October date, the practical advice is simple: gather up to three carryable broken things, bring whatever tools you have, arrive with time to sit and learn, and expect to leave either with a working item or with a much better idea of why it is not working.