From quick fixes to repair projects: insights from a citizen science project

Repair initiatives have attracted increasing attention as a potential source for addressing a variety of sustainability challenges. Less evident are social scientific analysis about people repairing objects at home. This paper aims to provide insights into how people, who come together to fix objects in repair initiatives perform domestic repair. It does this by drawing upon works within sociological theories of consumption and media studies that concern themselves with examining the performance of everyday routines and how people adapt, integrate, use and/or reject objects in everyday life. Empirical data derived from a citizen science project reveals several phases of repairing objects at home and restorative acts connected to them: quick fixes, routine fixes, serious fixes, and repair projects. The paper highlights the importance of people’s competences, feeling of self-efficacy and everyday routines when it comes to carrying out domestic repair. More broadly, the paper shows how the integration of (repaired) objects into people’s daily routines is part of ongoing processes where the valuation of repaired objects and performances of repair play a key role in influencing the useful life of objects.