New Breakerspace gives Athens Residence a new way to let loose
The Breakerspace, run by UpCycle Ohio, gives people in Athens a new way to reuse, repurpose and release emotions. Inside a small storage unit lay items ranging from antique mugs to inoperative televisions, all ready for the wreckage. Don proper safety attire, read the rules and pull back the curtain to separate the rage room from the stressors of everyday life.
UpCycle General Manager Tony Hammons says a rage room is “exactly what it sounds like.”
“You go smash things,” Hammons says. “It’s a place to come have fun, it’s a place to come smash things, it’s a place to come get a little bit of therapeutic catharsis if you just need something out of your system.”
The idea came from what Hammons calls “a perfect dovetailing of meeting several needs with one thing.” Not only does The Breakerspace provide residents with an emotional outlet as the first rage room in Athens, but it also supports UpCycle’s zero waste initiative.
The rage room uses donations that might otherwise end up in a landfill. In doing so, this reduces waste and lessens their environmental impact.
UpCycle Ohio is part of Rural Action, a nonprofit based in Appalachian Ohio focused on “locally based, sustainable and inclusive development.”
AmeriCorps comes in regularly and tracks the total weight of Breakerspace recyclables kept out of local landfills with each visit. What can’t be recycled is donated to the UpCycle Ohio Community Makerspace, a “gym for your brain” where members can access materials and tools for crafts, sewing, woodworking and even metalworking.
Abiding by Upcycle’s mission to repurpose, the materials used to build the room consist of nearly all recycled materials, while plywood, screws and nails were the only items purchased for construction. Everything else was upcycled and recycled in some way, including the padded walls formed by carpets, rugs and lids from rubber tubs.
“One of our goals is to find the highest and best use for the things that are donated,” Hammons says.
Monique Singleterry, a project manager and graduate of The Ohio State University, booked a joint session with a friend.
“This is a unique experience; this is the first time we’ve ever done anything like this,” Singleterry says. “If you want more time, they have more items you can buy. If you get in there and you find out that you had a little bit too much rage, you still have time to get some of it out.”
“It was amazing, we had so much fun,” Tori Swarm, who went into the rage room with Laura Costa dos Santos, says. The two work as success advisors at Ohio University.
Costa dos Santos says her favorite parts were the baseball bats, while Swarm enjoyed the variety of smashable objects.
“It was really fun actually. I had a good time,” Costa dosSantos says. “It was fun to get to break stuff, to get to do something different, to be able to let loose and throw things around.”