Bring broken items to Repair Café for “fixing” and fun on May 1

North Portland Tool Library is hosting the next Repair Café on Thursday, May 1 from 6–9 p.m. at the Kenton Firehouse at 8105 N Brandon Ave.

This event is the start of a new partnership between Repair PDX and North Portland Tool Library, where the tool library will host quarterly Repair Cafés at their space in North Portland.

North Portland Tool Library is a resource dedicated to building community and fostering sustainability by providing residents with tools AND the power to use them. Community members may borrow from the extensive collection of tools, free of charge. The tools in the library will also be available at the Repair Café.

Repair Cafés are free events where “fixers” — volunteers who like to fix things — come together with people who have broken items that need repair. Fixers work alongside attendees, so there is an opportunity to learn how to fix items. Repair Cafés are organized by Repair PDX and have been taking place around Portland since May 2013. Read more in our previous post on Portland’s repair movement.

Bring broken home and garden items for volunteers to help fix – for free! This event will include:

• Bike repair
• Garment and fabric mending
• Small appliance repair
• Lawnmower and small engine repair
• Speaker repair

The last repair event brought nearly 90 people to Northeast Portland to fix 99 items. The items ranged from lawnmowers, bikes and clothes to a circular saw, waffle iron, lamps and more. That equals 305 pounds of materials saved for reuse! Bring your broken items to the next event and see how fun fixing can be.

Spring neighborhood cleanups inspire reuse

Cindy Correll, Reuse Alliance Oregon Chapter chair and Be Resourceful partner, encourages reuse at neighborhood cleanup events.

“Neighborhoods all across Portland hold cleanup events to give residents a chance to reduce waste and unwanted items from their home, basement or garage. If you’ve participated in a cleanup, you know how satisfying it feels to get rid of clutter.

Sometimes you have things that are still perfectly usable, but you don’t need them. Several nonprofit organizations around town welcome donations of household goods, furniture, appliances and building materials, both new and used. Learning about these organizations and what items they accept, and then driving to each location to make deliveries, takes time and effort. Wouldn’t it be convenient if you could just bring your reusable items to your neighborhood cleanup event and drop all of this stuff off in one place? Reuse Alliance thinks so.

Building reuse communities

Reuse Alliance is a national nonprofit organization working to increase awareness of the environmental, social and economic benefits of reuse. The Oregon Chapter, based in Portland, supports Reuse Alliance’s mission locally. Seeing an opportunity to educate the public about the benefits of reuse while also putting reuse into practice, the chapter developed a pilot program to collect reusable items at two neighborhood cleanup events. With many cleanups already collecting reusable items, it seemed the perfect time to expand reuse options.

To prepare for the pilot, Reuse Alliance learned about cleanups from the experts – the coordinators who organize these events – and enlisted the assistance of some nonprofit organizations that regularly accept reusable goods in donation.

Working in partnership with the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS), Reuse Alliance is conducting two pilot reuse events this spring. The pilot’s goal is to increase the number of cleanups that offer reuse options going forward and to inspire cleanups that already practice reuse to expand their collection of reusable items.

Pilot program events

North Tabor and Mt Tabor neighborhood associations are hosting their event on Saturday, April 26, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. at Mt Tabor Middle School at 5800 SE Ash St (parking lot, SE 57th Ave entrance).

Southwest Neighborhood Inc. is hosting their event for residents of all Southwest Portland neighborhood associations on Saturday, May 10, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. at Portland Christian Center, 5700 SW Dosch Rd.

At both events, participating nonprofit organizations Community Warehouse, Habitat for Humanity ReStore, Community Cycling Center and others will collect reusable items in a centralized area, allowing residents to bring all their reusable items to one spot.

With the reuse area positioned near the event entrance, residents drop off their reusable items first. Putting reuse at the forefront of the cleanups also gives Reuse Alliance the opportunity to inform attendees about options for offloading reusable goods in the future."

Take action

If you live in one of the neighborhoods participating in the reuse pilots, bring reusable items to the events. Learn more about Neighborhood Cleanup events in our recent post and to verify what items are accepted. Find out about Reuse Alliance and news about Oregon Chapter meetings and community involvement.

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

Community Supported Agriculture connects you to fresh food direct from local farmers

What gives you the convenience of fresh food delivered to your neighborhood, the ability to try new produce varieties that are grown for our region, supports the local economy, helps protect farmland and allows you to get to know local farmers? A CSA!

What is a CSA?

Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, is a way to eat fresh, local food through building a relationship between a farmer and member of the community. In a CSA, households become “shareholders” or “subscribers” and provide the financial support for the season’s farming by purchasing a share of the harvest or becoming a member of the farm. Once harvesting begins, shareholders typically receive weekly shares of seasonal vegetables. Some farms also include fruit, eggs, dairy, meat and poultry. Others offer extras like flowers or honey.

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

How does it work?

There are many CSAs in our region. Each farm is unique and may have slightly different harvest seasons, share sizes and prices. Some farms are certified organic and some follow sustainable practices but are not certified.

Share prices vary by share size and the number of weeks in the farm’s season (often late May or June through October, though some farms specialize in year round or just winter shares). Farm websites detail what they plan to grow for a season. Most farms have systems for paying in installments rather than one lump sum and some take Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. 

Once you’ve found your farm and the season begins, each week you pick up your vegetables. Different farms have different delivery methods. Some ask you to come to the farm to pick up your share (a good way to introduce kids to where food comes from), others drop off vegetables in boxes or bags at different sites around Portland, and a few will deliver to your door. To help you get the most out of your vegetables, farmers also include newsletters and recipes.

How to participate

If you want to join over 7,000 Portland-area households that are participating in a CSA farm, here’s how to get started: 

Determine if joining a CSA is right for you and your family. Do you like cooking? Vegetables? Trying new foods? Do you feel like you want to eat more vegetables but aren’t sure how to get started? If you answered yes to any of these questions, a CSA share might be a good fit.

Find the farm that works for you. A new map details CSA farm drop-off points in Portland and makes it easy for hungry (and busy) shoppers to search for farmers who deliver fresh, locally grown food to specific neighborhoods. Join a farm by contacting the farm that interests you to learn about participation and everything that entails. Pick up and enjoy your season of local food!

Get rid of clutter (and find stuff you need) at neighborhood cleanup events all over Portland

Spring is here, which means it’s time to clear out the clutter from your home, basement or garage!

There are nearly 50 neighborhood cleanup events scheduled throughout Portland during the spring months. Volunteers from neighborhood associations coordinate these events and have been offering more options for reuse and swapping at the events every year. Last year, 33 neighborhood cleanups incorporated onsite reuse options, allowing neighbors to take, swap or buy items immediately. 

Now in its sixth year, Trash to Treasure in North Portland is Portland’s largest swap event and is hosted as part of the St. Johns and Cathedral Park neighborhood cleanup. The daylong event includes over 5,000 items being exchanged between families at no cost.

This year’s Trash to Treasure is on Saturday, April 26, 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. at Red Sea Church, 7535 N Chicago Ave. It is open to the public, free of charge and 100 percent volunteer run. Be Resourceful will have a booth at the event so residents can learn more about resourceful living and share community resources.

This video shows how Trash to Treasure comes together and builds community. 

The seven Neighborhood Coalitions have listings of the scheduled cleanup events by neighborhood association.

• Central Northeast Neighbors (CNN)
• East Portland Neighborhood Office (EPNO)
• Neighbors West/Northwest (NW/NW)
• North Portland Neighborhood Services (NPNS)
• Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods (NECN)
• Southeast Uplift Neighborhood Coalition (SEUL) 
• Southwest Neighborhoods, Inc. (SWNI)

Find contact information for your neighborhood association from the Office of Neighborhood Involvement or call 503-823-4519. Metro offers resources for planning a community cleanup event. Contact the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability at 503-823-7202 for possible cleanup dates, locations, costs and accepted materials.

Borrow and share kitchen wares in NE and SE Portland

Kitchen Share is a network of kitchen tool libraries building community through the sharing of equipment, skills, traditions and food. They offer dehydrators, canning equipment, ice cream makers, juicers, mixers, bread makers, durable dishes and more.

On a recent Saturday, Alicia Polacok, from Be Resourceful partner Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, stopped by Kitchen Share Southeast. Founder Robin Koch was volunteering that day, and Alicia had the opportunity to talk with her about her project.

When Robin Koch started Kitchen Share Southeast in August 2012, she modeled it on the Southeast Portland Tool Library and wanted it to be a combination of their model for borrowing tools, along with other organizations that were popping up around Portland that are part of the sharing community.

Brentwood-Darlington resident Emily Jameson has been a member since 2013 and stopped by that Saturday to borrow a juicer. Emily was looking to try juicing for the first time. Instead of buying an expensive piece of equipment that takes up more room in her kitchen, she borrowed the juicer to give it a try and see if she liked it.

This is what Robin is striving for – to provide a service where borrowing and sharing items is common and where the benefits include less of an environmental and financial impact around consumption.

Kitchen Share Southeast has close to 300 members and over 200 items available to borrow. Robin said residents often donate items when combining households with another person, removing unused items when moving or assisting aging parents when they shift into retirement homes.

More recently, Robin got involved with a group in Northeast Portland who was interested in bringing a kitchen share to their neighborhoods as well. There was a decision between the groups to pull some resources, including a website, and offer support to what is now Kitchen Share Northeast. It opened in August 2013 and is housed in the same space as the Northeast Portland Tool Library. Both kitchen shares and tool libraries lease space from churches.

These community resources are membership-based and have limited hours due to the grassroots, volunteer nature of the organizations. An ongoing step is recruiting neighbors and members to get involved so the organization can staff more hours and make it easier to use the library.  Robin said it the libraries would be much improved if they could be open more hours.

Do you have kitchen items you no longer use? Are you interested in building community through events such as do-it-yourself classes on cooking and food preservation?

This video captures what Kitchen Share Southeast is and how it works. Check it out and get involved.

Another local organization where residents can become members and borrow kitchen items is the Home Goods Library in Southeast Portland.