Do you have things you use infrequently or are looking to borrow something briefly?
It’s a real shame when we have stuff doing nothing sitting on our shelves in our home and it’s also a shame when we need something for a small project or event or trip, but know we won’t use it again and so can’t justify buying or storing it.
Well now there’s a solution to both of these problems! Peer to peer lending.
You may have heard of the Library of Things in Headingley and that’s a different method where everything is held in one business location and lent out to people from it but peer to peer lending is different. You, the individual, decide what you want to lend out and then post it to a website like fatllama.com.
If you are looking to borrow just search for what you’re looking for and hopefully someone nearby will have one you can borrow. You can also request items if you can’t find them through search.
This is a great way of both making money or saving money and carbon. Instead of buying things from abroad why not keep money circulating in Leeds.
The most borrowed items from the Library of Things in Headingley are:
- Foldable Ladder
- pizza oven
- 4 person tent
- carpet cleaner
- hedge trimmer
- Folding table
- 30cm Disco Ball
- High Pressure Washer
- power drill
- projector
Almost none of these items are on Fat Llama, if you have them and list them you are almost guaranteed to find someone who wants to borrow them. Likewise if you are looking to borrow this kind of stuff please look on Fat Llama.
Imagine if everyone in Leeds lent out stuff they had and knew what there was to borrow in their neighbourhood. The community could do more exciting stuff like film nights with projectors or DIY, or go camping or holiday more easily or do some retrofit insulation more easily by borrowing tools. the possibilities are endless when we all share the resources we have in our city.
This post was written by Jed Aitchison
We encourage anyone living or working in South Leeds to use this website to tell their news. You can either use the Create an article for South Leeds Life page, or email us at: info@southleedslife.com
While you’re here, can we ask a favour?
South Leeds Life is published by a not-for-profit social enterprise. We keep our costs as low as possible but we’ve been hit by increases in the print costs for our monthly newspaper which have doubled in the last two years.
Could you help support local community news by making a one off donation, or even better taking out a supporters subscription?
Donate here, or sign up for a subscription at bit.ly/SLLsubscribe
