Sharing culture helps us live small
I think Mother Teresa said it best when it comes to all seven billion of us on this planet. “Live simply so others may simply live.”
One of the easiest, most efficient, and friendliest ways to live simply is by sharing. Sharing saves on space, cuts down costs, and can even subsidize major assets like cars and condos. Sharing can be instrumental in building trusting relationships, and is a great way to lighten our environmental footprint, too. If we want to live simply, or live “small” as I like to call it, then embracing the new sharing culture is a great place to start.
Our emerging sharing culture is helping us make a big shift in how we approach meeting our everyday needs. Instead of relying on me, myself, and I to get something done, now we’re connecting, often online, with others for assistance. It seems that new ways of connecting and sharing are being discovered all the time, and it’s all rather exciting.
For example, consider personal ride shares where people can sign up online to carpool to work, or travel across the country on a big trip. Not only can you share the cost of fuel and the tedium of driving long distances, but you might also enjoy sharing some good conversation along the way.
Then there are commercial short-term car shares, which seem to be popular in urban centres. According to car2go, their service works like this: “Just take it, drive it, park it...You go from A to B, park your car2go again and that’s that. It’s fun, saves money and helps the environment.”
More recently we’re seeing private car shares, such as Zipcar, where individuals put their personal vehicles up “for rent” at times when they aren’t being used, such as during work, class, or sleeping hours. What a great way to monetize an expensive asset! Instead of it being parked all day, your vehicle can go to work for you while you are busy doing something else. Let’s not forget about the savings and convenience experienced by the other driver, and the lowered demand for car-related resource extraction and manufacturing—these are worth mentioning, too.
Then there is Uber, a taxi-like model for a car-sharing service. Uber has received both good press and bad, shining a light on how the sharing culture impacts, often negatively, the traditional market-based way of doing business. The good news is that the sharing culture, or sharing economy as it is sometimes called, continues to evolve as it seeks solutions to important concerns. Perhaps our new inclination “to share” instead of “to own” will ultimately benefit the way we do business in the future.
Public and school libraries are familiar ways of sharing, but now there are also libraries run by individuals and small groups. One of my favourite sharing models is the Little Free Library movement. Gently used books, for others to enjoy on a completely complimentary basis, are stocked in what looks like an adorable over-sized birdhouse built and managed by someone like you or me.
Unlike a normal public library, the Little Free Library has no memberships, no fees or fines, and no need to have any books returned. Many who use the Little Free Library often donate books as a way of giving back. A more wonderful way to give a book a second life would be hard to find.
Personally, I’d like to see tool-sharing library in neighbourhoods everywhere. Why buy an expensive power tool that you’ll only use once when you can borrow it from your local tool library? Besides, would you have room to store that power tool even if you had the money to comfortably purchase it? For retired tradespeople wondering what to do with their free time, maybe setting up and running a tool library, one that included how-to workshops, could be for you.
For those with the travel bug, couch surfing, AirBnB, home sharing, and other peer-to-peer accommodation sharing services provide inexpensive and sometimes adventurous options to routine hotel and motel stays.
If making more use out of what we already have continues to appeal, then it looks like our new sharing culture will be here to stay. Supporting the sharing culture to live small and more simply—now that’s in our best interest.
For more in your best interest, follow Sheelagh on Twitter @sheesays.
