I spent Sunday in the backyard swearing at the lawn mower. A number of rainy weekends in a row, combined with the fact I work during the week, meant that the lawn had been substantially neglected. I fired up the mower to tackle the waist-high grass in the back corner of the yard, and after about 20 seconds the sound of a machine gun rang out through the neighbourhood.
It was, of course, a brick being chewed by the blades – actually it was more like the blades being chewed by the brick.
To make matters worse, when I attempted to restart it, I yanked the starter cord straight off, and had to spend the next 30 minutes opening up the top of the mower and re-threading it. Good times.
I’m never quite satisfied with the lawn – mainly because we don’t own a whipper snipper. It got me thinking, those guys who buy all the tools they need to avoid renting or borrowing gear must spend thousands of dollars at Bunnings. Also, the percentage of time their tools are in use compared to being stored in the shed must be around 0.1%.
Sounds like the perfect candidate for a neighbourhood co-operative to me. Tool sharing has been going on since the dawn of agriculture. Even today in rural areas, farmers band together to create sharing arrangements to reduce equipment costs, particularly when they are all farming the same produce.
It’s quite typical of the modern day materialist city slicker to want a brand new Makita of his own, in fact the advertising even reinforces it. Don’t get me wrong, I own a bunch of tools, and probably couldn’t survive without a cordless drill and a tape measure of my own, but I can’t think of anything more painful than forking over my hard earned for a bit of gear that’s going to get fired up once every six months.
So I’m thinking of starting a tool sharing program (or co-operative) in Northcote, my local area. It sounds like a lot of work to get it off the ground, but if I can recruit a few friends to help get the word out, I’m sure that there’s plenty of people who’ll get involved.
Here’s some interesting resources I’ve already found:
- Darebin Community Grants – A kickstart from the local council wouldn’t hurt
- Start Your Own Tool Share – A great article on the benefits of tool sharing
- The Co-operative Start Up Manual – Can’t believe I found this, it’s even based on case studies of co-ops formed in Victoria (rural ones)