b Biggest pitfall of the "sharing economy" is that "most people do not want to share." — Adam L. Penenberg, based on a story about what went wrong with Neighborrow
If you want to save money and/or space, it can make sense to borrow or rent infrequently used, expensive or space-hogging items, rather than owning them. And while Neighborrow found that many people seemed to prefer the convenience of owning, there are certainly other people who will deal with a bit of inconvenience just fine.
Although the Neighborrow website had its challenges, plenty of borrowing from neighbors, friends and family still goes on. And other sites are still trying to do something similar to what Neighborrow was doing: matching up people who have things with people who want to rent or borrow them. There's SnapGoods, which I heard about from Peter Shankman; the images above come from the SnapGoods website. NeighborGoods is one I heard about from Unclutterer and Lifehacker. Share Some Sugar is a site I read about on Springwise. And The New York Times pointed me to iRent2u.
In Australia, there's Open Shed, which I heard about from Lissanne Oliver. And in New Zealand, there's Hire Things, another find from The New York Times.
There are some very interesting specialized rentals going on, too. I've already written about all sorts of things you can rent — everything from cake pans to camera lenses — but I've found even interesting rentals recently.
If you're anywhere near Ware, England, take a look at Vintage Allsorts, where you can rent "beautiful vintage crockery" for your party or event. As the owner says: "My ever expanding collection of mismatched china and glass, personally sourced from my love of all things vintage, includes teacups & saucers, teapots, cake stands, sugar bowls and lots more; everything you need for a touch of elegance and glamour."
In France, you can use La Machine du Voisin to rent a neighbor's washing machine. [via Springwise, Good and David Lebovitz.]
And while we've talked before about renting maternity clothes and baby clothes, and even wedding gowns, I just now found there's a company in Colorado that will rent you a kilt.
Related Posts:
Renting Things You Never Knew Could Be Rented
Now Where Did I Put that R2D2 Cake Pan?
The Sharing Solution
1 Way to Avoid Future De-Cluttering Decisions: Rent the Wedding Gown
Renting or Borrowing vs. Owning
5 comments:
Kudos for one of your best articles ever -- while you find some beautiful items for organizing, this is the sort of great information and ideas about having LESS that can really impact me. Thanks a lot for writing and posting it -- and I love the links to more like it that you have penned in the past!
Wow, this is a good post! I've never heard of most of these sites and I've got to admit I fell for the name, "Share Some Sugar" [Sigh! People can be so clever] Anyway, great info and, ahem, thanks for sharing!
So glad you found this useful, Julie and Geralin!
I totally agree with renting/borrowing things needed infrequently. We've rented some landscape equipment instead of buying.
I must say though, it seems that often people don't give the same care to items owned by others as they do their own. It makes me a bit leery about starting to loan or rent out my stuff. Maybe I'm a bit paranoid, but after loaning out books and either not gotten them back at all, or gotten them back damaged, I'm not sure I'd want to loan out anything of higher value.
JustGail, you might enjoy this Contract for Potential Book Borrowers.
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