Brooks: Make do and mend! It’s good for your clothes, good for the planet and great for your wallet.

A zipper breaks. A seam rips. A snagged loop of yarn unravels into a gaping hole.

Suddenly, you have a pile of frayed fabric where your favorite jeans used to be — and a choice.

Buy another pair of jeans? Or make do and mend?

On a rainy Friday, in the very back of a Minneapolis thrift shop, a sewing machine whirred. One by one, visitors to Old School by Steeple People followed the sound, carrying their damaged goods to volunteer mender Laura Schroeder.

“I have these skills, I might as well use them,” said Schroeder, who hasn’t shopped retail in about 30 years.

Everything in her wardrobe is thrifted, then tailored into something uniquely her own — like the lacy sleeves on her blouse that had once been a skirt. “This is the perfect outlet for me,” she said.

It was a free repair clinic organized by Reuse Minnesota, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people get more use out of still-useful things.

Whether you’re out to save the planet, save some money or just save your favorite pair of jeans, mend-it and fix-it clinics are drawing crowds across the state.

“That’s what I find so exciting,” said Emily Barker, executive director of Reuse Minnesota. “There really is a place for everyone in the reuse conversation. Do they like mending? Do they like tinkering? Do they like thrifting? Do they like donating things and help other people find things?”

On Reuse Minnesota’s site, visitors can find lists of re-use resources — from repair clinics to repair shops, toy libraries to cloth diaper banks, to community swap events where you can bring something you no longer need and trade it for something your neighbor no longer needs.

The thrifty generations that came before might have known how to sew a button, pickle a cucumber and change their own oil. Those skills didn’t necessarily make it down to us. Mend-it clinics are there to offer a hand — or a lesson.

“I’m amazed at how many people can’t sew on a button,” Schroeder said, flicking a lighter and using the flame to fuse the repair she was making to the torn pocket of someone’s backpack. “I so want people to learn. If they just had that little basic skill, we could save so many things from being wasted.”

Americans own far more garments than we used to — but wear them half as long. Some of our discarded outfits find their way to charity or thrift shops. The other 17 million tons a year wind up in landfills.

Part of Reuse Minnesota’s mission is funded by community groups and government agencies that know the best way to keep things out of landfills is to keep them in use.

A grant from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency funded a yearlong series of mend-it and fix-it clinics across the state. Shoppers at the Wedge Co-op donated more than $10,000 that will allow Reuse Minnesota to offer partial rebates to residents who bring a malfunctioning appliance to a repair shop, instead of the dump.

Back at the mending clinic, Schroeder runs through a list of things people have brought to her for mending, including a pile of cheap tube socks with holes in the heels that were better off being reused as dust cloths.

“Lots of jackets, lots of jeans where they’ve blown out the knees or blown out the crotch,” she said with a chuckle. “I’ve seen a lot of young girls with a lot of fast fashion, so the quality is just horrible.”

As she mended fast-but-flimsy fashion, she tried to make sure the garments would stay in those girls’ closets for more than a season — reinforcing weak seams, repairing snapped straps and replacing weak elastic waistbands with adjustable drawstrings.

“You need to sit down and watch,” she tells her students, “and we’ll teach you.”

Making do and mending is good for your wardrobe, wallet and world. Barker has learned it can be pretty good for the soul, too.

Last summer, a woman came into a fix-it clinic with an ordinary-looking fleece jacket that needed a new zipper. That jacket was one of the last things her father had given her before he died.

“It was just a basic fleece coat. There wasn’t anything special about it in terms of the materials or the quality, it was just a fleece jacket,” Barker said. “But for her, it was this final connection to her dad.”

They mended it for her.

Looking to make do and mend? Check the calendar of upcoming events here.