Don't Want To Buy? You Can Borrow Household Items Too

Amanda Blum enjoys trying new recipes and experimenting in the kitchen, but like many home cooks, she’s reluctant to buy expensive and bulky kitchen appliances.

So she was delighted to learn about Kitchen Share, a nonprofit near her home in Portland, Oregon, that loans out kitchen equipment. Bloom, who likes to preserve fruits and vegetables at this time of year, found a name-brand pressure canner there that makes the task easier and safer.

Since then, she’s become a regular borrower, checking out Kitchen Share’s blender, ice cream maker and pressure cooker.

“This is such a huge resource,” she said. “It solves the problem of having to buy all these things.”

Around the country, traditional libraries and a small number of non-profit lending operations loan out collections of household items: cake pans in Akron, Ohio; paintings in Minneapolis; telescopes in St. Louis; sewing machines in Rochester, New York.

For traditional libraries, such items are a natural extension of their mission to provide resources to the community. Many of the other institutions see lending programs as a way to help people save money or lead more sustainable lives by owning fewer things.