If you've broken a beloved lamp or uncovered a hole in your favourite pair of jeans, sometimes it's easier to buy a new item rather than finding the time the time to repair them.
However, a growing global movement aims to instead teach and change attitudes towards how we treat pre-loved items.
The Darebin Repair Cafe, based in Melbourne, has been repairing items for free for nearly five years and has saved two tonnes of waste from landfill.
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The group, who are part of the International Repair Cafe Foundation, are run by dedicated volunteers, all passionate about improving environmental attitudes.
"We try out best to fix most things," branch co-founder Amanda Healy told 9news.com.au.
"We have so many people come through the cafe over the past years, which is great.
"It's really amazing. This creates a shared passion of keeping things out of landfill. We have a lot of people come repeatedly and people love coming and getting involved."
The first repair cafe first opened in the Netherlands in 2009 and has now become a worldwide movement.
There are more than 2573 cafes around the world who fix an average of 46,300 items a month.
The cafe is run from a group of repairers who specialise in a certain skill-set.
At the Darebin event over the weekend, fixer PJ volunteered his time, bringing his extensive tool kit down to help fix electrical items including a lamp made from a jewellery box which has particular sentimental value for its owner.
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"It needs to be rewired and the pipe needs to be replaced in the lamp, so this is what I am doing today," he told 9news.com.au.
"The lady has went to Bunnings to pick up a part that I need and we are hoping to finish fixing this today."
PJ, who is semi-retired, only moved to Melbourne six months ago from Sydney and has been volunteering his time over the past three events.
Specialising in electronics, PJ said he enjoys spending time chatting with different people.
"I didn't have a lot of connections before I moved to Melbourne, so it's stimulating and it's great to use my head to fix things and problem solve. I love making things work," he said.
"It's great to be in the community and chat to people. It's hard when you get to the end of your working life and suddenly stop, so it's great to have these things."
It's a similar story for Erin Lewis-Fitzgerald, who is one of Australia's leading clothes-mending practitioners.
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Lewis-Fitzgerald volunteers her time when she can to teach people how to mend and repair their clothing.
She has been a business-owner and writer and has published her own book which focuses around mending.
"It's great to use my skill-set to help and teach people around mending and repairing but it's also great to be around people and being a part of a community full of people who are passionate about the same things," she said.
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"This is a good place to start conversations about the environment. It's a place where people can learn about something that needs to be or how it can be fixed.
"This is a place to get things replaced and keep them out of landfill."
The Darebin Repair Cafe runs every two months at different locations in Darebin and is one of many cafes based around the world.
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