TV Drama.

Fixing stuff should be the norm. But often the only option is "throw it away!"

My old TV in my old West Hollywood Apartment. Phot by Zeke Ruelas.

My mom was visiting me at Londo Lodge recently. She brought her rice cooker to make a really good meal with salmon, mushrooms, and vegetables (all in the rice cooker because I was shooting video in the kitchen). She’s had this rice cooker forever, since we lived in Yosemite, so probably ten to twenty years minimum. If you don’t have a rice cooker I have no idea how you make rice (I find doing that on stove top impossible). I got one as a gift and I use it all the time, mostly to make Satie’s weekly fresh food mix of brown rice, vegetables, and salmon. A rice cooker just makes it so much easier to make decent rice. No spill off, no burning rice smell, no rice stuck to the side of the pot. But also, I guess, it’s just another appliance that will eventually break.

A half hour after my mom turned the rice cooker on to heat up the meal, she noticed the display didn’t seem to be working. Was the rice cooker broken? Seemingly, yes. After some online sleuthing, she found that there was a place in the Bay Area she could take small appliances to get fixed though it was unclear from the listing she found (and the number she called) if they could help her with the rice cooker.

So there we were in a position we’ve all been in before - sitting next to a broken appliance, trying to figure out if there’s any way to fix it. It turned out there wasn’t a lot of information about how to fix this particular rice cooker and it seemed like there was no way it could cost less than $75-$100 to fix. Which doesn’t work because the machine itself was probably around $200. I’m sure there is a fix somewhere out there for this rice cooker but we’re not really meant to find it. Instead, because it would cost half as much to fix it (and after all that you end up with a twenty year old rice cooker) we are meant to throw it away and buy a new one. I feel like manufacturers aren’t even hiding this anymore - everything is just blatantly disposable.

Manufacturers make things that aren’t meant to last very long. They are meant to last just long enough that you can enjoy using it and like it enough to want one in your life. Then it breaks or gets outdated and you have to buy another one. If you look into fixing something rather than throw it away, you’re often met with “what are you, poor?” judgement. It’s just not ingrained in our culture to contemplate fixing things because nothing is made to last.

One of the biggest pet peeves I have is a bad vacuum. Firstly, because I love vacuuming and a bad vacuum takes an experience that is totally satisfying and efficient and makes it an inefficient nightmare. Second, because vacuums have been around long enough to not be total pieces of shit anymore. There’s just no excuse for how cheap and breakable they are. They’re only crappy for marketing and sales reasons (if they were too well made and lasted too long the market for new vacuums would implode).

I’m not gonna name names here, but there’s a very popular vacuum (brand rhymes with Tyson) that tend to always be broken. I learned this years ago while I was an assistant on Emily Henderson’s HGTV design makeover show. Before each reveal, I’d often be helping clean/prep the space and nine times out of ten the homeowners had a Rhymes with Tyson vacuum. And they were all broken, spitting out more dust than they took in, regardless how many times I emptied the stupid bagless chamber as clumps of cat hair went directly into my mouth.

Why were these $800 vacuums broken? Because they were made entirely of cheap plastic components. Also, what’s so bad about a vacuum bag? They filter the air and make it so you don’t have to choke on chunks of dust when you dump out the contents of the vacuum into the trash. The fact that company is seen as high end when their vacuums are so cheaply made is beyond me.

One of the main issues I have with bad vacuums is that, just like everything else, they aren’t designed to be repaired. As consumers, we’re expected to just get a new one when the old one fails. I think there’s probably a few things going on here. Number one, my guess is that these items are probably too cheap. They’re too cheap and cheaply made because we want to be able to afford them without saving up. A hundred years ago a vacuum was probably a huge investment. And when you spend a higher proportion of your income on something you’re more incentivized to fix it. We don’t have that same incentive with bargain vacuums. And even the expensive Rhymes with Tyson vacuums don’t last, so why would we spend more?

I think honestly we’re all part of the problem when it comes to how disposable things are now. We’ve just decided as a society that things being cheap and accessible is more important than them being quality or long lasting. I myself fall into the same trap. For example, I’ve gone through a vacuums in the past ten years. I had a cheaper Electrolux (around $300) vacuum that died, could not be fixed, and would not come back to life. Probably what I should have done is saved up for a more expensive, easy to repair option (apparently they’re out there). Instead, I bought a $300 Miele machine that I’ve had good luck with so far. At certain point, however, my vacuum is probably going to break and it’s going to be a challenge to fix it, perhaps impossible.

This isn’t just about appliances, it feels like almost everything we use is meant to be replaced all the time. Clothing, cars, computers, phones, and even home furnishings are becoming more and more temporary. But it’s frustrating to want to do the right thing (repair not replace) only to be met with so many hurdles you just give up: cost, lack of repair shops/resources, companies not offering replacement parts making a broken machine completely useless the moment one part of it fails, and so on.

The TV at Londo Lodge before it froze to death.

Such is the case with the TV at my cabin. When I moved into the house, I bought a beautiful, decorative TV for about $1600 (it’s a $2000 TV that is seemingly always on sale somewhere). This decorative TV (which I refuse to name) is probably one you’ve noticed all over your favorite design accounts. It’s one of the only TVs that you can buy decorative frames for, with a screen saver when not in use that makes the TV look like art. It’s weird how long this took - TV’s are literally the same size and proportion as decorative art. Why did it take so long for someone to think of making a TV you could add a frame to.

Turns out (according to my internet research) the TV I had at my cabin didn’t really like being cold. After a few years, the TV screen turned all black with one stripe. My cabin is at Yosemite and the nearest biggish city is Fresno, so I looked into getting my TV (which had just gone out of warrantee) repaired in town. I called a few places to see if they could fix it, but most places I called only serviced larger appliances like refrigerators or only serviced items they sold. Bigger companies like Best Buy will stand by their warranties (if you buy them) but wouldn’t service items bought elsewhere so I guess next time I’ll make sure to buy from one of the bigger stores, get an extended warrantee, and keep that info on hand.

Note To Self: Always buy the extended warrantee.

I ended up having no luck finding local help near the cabin, so I loaded the heavy 65” TV into the back of my station wagon and drove it to LA, where I’d found a few different places that serviced televisions. I made a few calls before I found out the particular issue with my TV wasn’t fixable, basically requiring a new screen which made the whole thing not really worth it financially.

So I gave up and now that TV is in my LA garage while I figure out how to get rid of it. I know they have electronics recycling facilities somewhere in town but it’s been a minute since I’ve had to get rid of anything like this. To date, I’ve spent hours solving a problem that probably was never solvable. I probably just should have given up immediately and come to terms with the fact I needed to buy a new TV.

I’m pretty annoyed that my TV just died and that fixing it isn’t really a possibility. I have the feeling that had I had a warrantee on it, they likely would have just sent me a new TV and told me to throw the old one away. Still not an ideal fix - the goal would be not to throw all those materials away. I liked the TV I had before and I’d spent $200 on a special frame for it. And now it’s all junk.

Obviously, I’m annoyed my expensive TV killed itself and I can’t afford to replace it. Luckily, I had another TV at the cabin to use as a stop-gap. But that TV is pretty old and needs to get replaced sooner rather than later (basically, the old one works but I want a better experience for my guests). I’m also just annoyed at the situation. It feels like even if you want to, you can’t really be a responsible consumer because it can be nearly impossible to decipher the difference between a high and low quality products. You can buy the fancy brand TV only to have it die prematurely. Or you can buy the inexpensive Vizio TV I now have at my cabin that must be ten years old by now but is still kicking.

The TV at my LA place - sadly though the TV is the same model and size as the one that broke at my cabin the frame doesn’t fit on it because it was made in a different year. Photo by Tessa Neustadt.

Ultimately, with things like TVs, sometimes you just get a lemon. My parents bought the same cheap Vizio I still have and theirs died less than two years in. I have the same fancy art TV I had at my cabin in my LA place and it’s doing fine (knock on wood). The issue with tech improving so much, so often is that we’re constantly left in the dust if we don’t replace it all the time. It seems like things are not going to slow down. TVs are going to become obsolete faster and faster so probably the best thing to do would be to just make them out of recycled, recyclable materials knowing that we’re going to get rid of them as quickly as we acquired them. I wish it weren’t like this, but it truly feels like most things we bring into our homes that involve any sort of tech are meant to be replaced every five years.

I’ve spent the last four years furnishing two homes top to bottom. And in that time I’ve gone through a lot of home furnishings and appliances. I’ve worked with brands at varying price points and had furniture from different price points in my houses. Some of it has lasted really well and some I’ve gotten rid of before it could wear out. As consumers, we’re incentivized to look for the cheapest option out there. But often the most affordable option is the most temporary.

I don’t know what my point in writing about all this is other than to just express frustration with living in a culture where doing the right thing (repairing what you have rather than throwing it away) is seemingly harder and harder. You’d be hard pressed to find a vacuum or TV repair shop that will service your machine (if such a service even exists in your area). We need to be able to fix shit! People are sick of throwing newish stuff away simply because it wasn’t covered by a warrantee. This is all a fucking waste.

For now, I’ve given into the notion that I just need to bite the bullet and get a new, cheaper TV for the cabin given that the fancy one doesn’t like living there. So today, I’m going to [GASP!] walk into a brick and mortar Best Buy and see if the TV I’ve been eyeing online will do the trick. Wish me luck!

Anyone out there have any tips for the rest of us on how and where to fix things? Or strategies to avoid electronic waste? Let me know in the comments!