I have a clock in my kitchen and it is broken. I had a decision to make: buy new clockworks and a new battery, or have a broken clock. I have a broken clock – but that is ok because the function of this clock is decorative, not for keeping time.
There may be a few things in your house that are also broken, and you may decide that these things don’t need to be fixed and you might save some money by deciding not to fix them.
Here are some things to think about when you are faced with a broken item and debating about how to proceed:
1. Is the function of the broken item still served?
2. Would it be cheaper to buy a replacement (new or used) rather than pay for a repair?
3. If you can repair it yourself with things you already have on-hand, is it worth your time to repair it?
4. If you now consider this broken item no longer useful for your household, can you donate it or offer it for free to become someone else’s treasure?
Share with me what broken items you have in your household that you choose not to fix for frugal reasons?
Our ice maker still works but the fridge door water dispenser is broken. We haven’t fixed it yet because our local tap drinking water is perfectly fine, we just have to add ice to make it colder!
Thanks to everyone for sharing your great examples! Michelle – I make ice cubes in trays too! When our fridge completely died I bought a new one that did not include an ice maker with the plan to always make our own ice in trays and it works good for us!
The ice maker in our refrigerator has been broken for about a year. Why pay to get it repaired or buy a new fridge, when you can just use old fashioned ice cube trays? I can’t tell you how many other people I have run into that have the same problem at their house. It is a little less convenient and guests always try to get the ice out of the door. (We tried to use the tray ice to fill up the door bucket thing, but our cubes are too big!).
Telephones. Does anyone even fix them anymore?If I must “retire” an item, I tear the innards apart and look for interesting pieces to create something new.I LOVE it when something breaks.
My air conditioner has been broke for two years now. In my opinion one does not need an A/C here since it doesn’t really get hot enough. I was actually kind of glad when it broke because then it didn’t have to be on anymore – ha. I hate winter so I don’t like the inside of my house to feel like winter revised.
We have a lamp in which the wiring no longer works (or something). It’s pretty, though, and that’s its main function — we haven’t fixed it.
Heather – I think it’s great that you left the clock as is! One of my favorite sayings is, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day!”
We have a van with two sliding doors (most people do nowadays I guess). One of the doors is broken and we won’t be fixing it anytime soon because of the cost. We still have one functioning sliding door so we’ve just retrained ourselves to only use that door.
This is a good one/ridiculous =). We just moved into our house a year ago and had great expectations of an “office”. Unfortunately we had nothing to put in it except a desk and my laptop. So when our old TV burned out about a year ago we brought it in there and set it up in the corner. It’s the perfect “useless” space filler!!