SHARING TOOLS

Keep Up with the Joneses

05.04.2009

The Bite:
Can't compete with your neighbor's latest big buy? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Pooling your resources with your neighbors for purchases like camping equipment and lawn mowers helps save those other, natural kind of resources. (Where's the glory in owning your own snowblower, anyway?)
The Benefits: 
  • Neighborly love. Adopting this tip might keep them from totally losing it when they find out you're mooching their wireless.
  • Getting one-up on resource savings. Calculus not required: Producing one lawn mower instead of two requires half the energy and materials.
  • Showing off some cash savings. By going in on purchases with the Biters next door, you can shave (at least) 50% off the high price of that new solar tent you'll use only 2 weeks a year.
  • Better status symbols. Sharing the cost means you can sport a swankier snowblower.
Personally Speaking: 
Mike and his neighbors co-bought a push broom for cleaning up the area outside his front door. Sadly, no one ever uses it.
Wanna Try: 
  • Never learned to share as a kid? Now's your chance.
  • Neighborrow - online directory that helps you and others in your 'hood borrow and lend stuff.

Cocktail Fact

Jones is the fourth most-common last name in the United States, after Smith, Johnson, and Williams.

Bang For The Bite

If 10,000 Biters go in on a 19-foot ladder with the Biters next door, we'll avert enough steel to fill 12 dump trucks.

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Tips Like This

This could be a great idea if you're totally certain that you're both going to be living there for a long period of time, but what do you do if you invest in camping or lawn equipment with a neighbor and then one of you gets a job transfer or moves a year or two later? Either someone has to buy out the other person to keep the equipment or you have to sell it and likely you'll both take a bit of a loss. I'd suggest writing up a contract on how to handle that situation, as well as damage that might occur or normal maintenence expenses. Also where it will be stored, because that is whose homeowner's insurance will cover any damage or loss in case of fire or theft. Neighborly love is great, but best to have it all covered in writing to reduce conflict later on.
Save STEEL sharing ladders? I've seen aluminum ladders, and I've seen fiberglass ladders, and I've seen wood ladders; but steel? Maybe all the steel IS the 12 dump trucks? Anyway, good idea other than the material blooper!
Our neighbor is a bush piolot and knows his way around an engine. My father and him shared a large brush cutter that needed special mechanical skills to repair, and it was a perfect match. That brush cutter got harder and harder to repair due to the lack of out dated parts needed, although it still runs they invested in a new one a couple of years ago and maintained the same rules of shared ownership. There has never been a conflict in the sharing of the machine, and a simple phone call determained weather this would be the weekend to do ones out door project. I think if contracts are needed than maybe they are not the right neighbor to share with. I live on an island so sharing equipment and bartering time for time and resources for resources is very common here.
my neighbor has had back surgerys ,so the other day while i mowed my yard i mowed his also. tho mine wasn't quite that high, his was knee deep, it was something that needed to be done so that he wouldn't get in trouble with the city. our city has a height law for the grass in your yard. i call them random acts of kindness that people should do every chance that they get. i feel if people do that then it will get passed along and it will change how people feel about each other.
This is a great tip, provided your neighbour (or in this case his wife) doesn't go psycho ... sadly not all of us live in bucolic neighbourhoods with smiling happy mentally stable neighbours. sharing is great, however there might need to be an "official" agreement drawn up to avoid very bad feelings being created regarding the costs of maintenance, replacement, usage, etc...
Any neighbors I ever had would either leave the item outside in the rain and ruin it, destroy it, let their relatives and friends borrow it in which case I would never see it again or I would find it later out by the trash or in their yard sale. It's a nice thought in theory, but... You must have really good neighbors!
The article suggested you could afford a better snowblower ,if you shared with a neighbour ;well ,snowblowers do not help the environment ! Suggest that people google www.wovel.com and see how to get rid of snow without harming our environment !!!!Doesn't even take a lot of elbow grease .We live in Canada ,so ,don't think we haven't any snow where we live !
Save STEEL sharing ladders? I've seen aluminum ladders, and I've seen fiberglass ladders, and I've seen wood ladders; but steel? Maybe all the steel IS the 12 dump trucks? Anyway, good idea other than the material blooper! games adventure games

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