What Are Your Sharing Goals?

Would you like to save time and money? Learn new skills and teach others what you know? Use fewer resources and reduce your carbon footprint? Get to know your neighbors and build community? You can get all of these valuable benefits—and many more—through sharing.

“Share” is a word of many meanings. As children, we “share” our crayons by letting others borrow them. We “share” our cookies by giving some to a friend or by exchanging them for some cheesy crackers. During “sharing time,” we tell our stories. We “share” a bike with our little sister and take turns using it. We “share” a task by cooperating to build a fort or put away our toys. At night, we “share” a bedroom, where we sleep together with our siblings. As adults, we “share” homes by dividing the space with someone else, we share in the ownership of a company by buying “shares” of corporate stock, we “share” information by making it available on the Internet, and we flock to see “Cher” on her final concert tour.

We won’t be covering all these ways to share in this book. For example, while we’re all in favor of donating money or time to charitable causes, giving away things you no longer need, and helping out people who’ve fallen on hard times, that’s not what this book is about. As we use the term, “sharing” refers to two or more people coming together to pool property, resources, or obligations or to do or create something together. In other words, the sharing arrangements we talk about in this book are mutual and reciprocal. Everyone involved is giving something and getting something, through endeavors like:

• co-owning property or pooling resources
• sharing use of property, either by taking turns or through simultaneous use
• cooperating to perform a task, make decisions, share responsibilities, or collectively purchase goods or services, and
• exchanging goods or services in a barter process.

This chapter will help you get started. Here, you’ll find information, ideas, and tools you can use to figure out your sharing goals and what you might like to share. To decide whether and what you’d like to share, start by considering your needs, wants, and personal preferences. For example, if you love to be surrounded by others, you might want to consider shared housing. If you want to build community with your neighbors but need lots of time and space to yourself, a neighborhood home improvement group or shared garden might better suit your needs. Using the worksheets in this chapter, you’ll be able to put together some sharing ideas that will really work for you.

Skip Ahead: For those who are already sharing or have a sharing plan. You may have picked up this book because you are planning to share something— for example, you want to share a car with your neighbor or a nanny with a friend—or are already sharing, and want to make sure you’ve considered all the important details. You may still benefit from considering your sharing goals and using some of the worksheets in this chapter, but it you’re anxious to get started, you can skip ahead to Chapter 2 (if you don’t yet have your sharing partners) or Chapter 3 (if you already know whom you plan to share with or are already sharing).

What Are Your Sharing Goals?

People make sharing arrangements for different reasons. Your sharing goals will often determine what you decide to share, and in what ways. In our experience, most people share for one or more of these reasons:

• to save money or acquire property (or the right to use it)
• to save time and reduce work and effort
• to live in a more “green” way
• to build community, and
• to get help with a project or learn a skill.

Financial and Property Goals

If you’re looking to save money, sharing is a very effective strategy. Sharing cuts the costs of buying, maintaining, and using property or hiring someone to provide services. Rather than paying the full cost of a care provider, truck, magazine subscription, or lawnmower, for example, you and each person you share with can shoulder a fraction of the cost. Sometimes, you can save almost all of what it would cost you to buy property by sharing with people who already own it. If, for example, you join a neighborhood tool sharing group, you might get to use a variety of expensive tools that others have contributed, without having to buy anything.

You can use the worksheet below to brainstorm about your sharing goals relating to money and property. We’ve provided a few examples to help you get started; ideas for all of these categories—and more—are covered in Part II . You’ll find a blank copy of this form in Appendix B.

Omitted from sample chapter: Money and Property Worksheet

Time and Efficiency Goals

Sharing can also save you time—for most of us, something that is at a premium. It’s amazing how spending time sharing actually gives you more free time. For example, if you share meals with four coworkers, you’ll have to spend the time to make lunch for five once a week, but you’ll save the time it would take you to make your own lunch on the other four days. Below is a worksheet for you to consider how you might open up some of your time by sharing, with some sample entries; a blank copy is in Appendix B.

Omitted from sample chapter: Time and Efficiency Worksheet

Environmental/Green Goals

Sharing is one of the easiest ways there is to start living a greener life. Adopting even one of the examples below can make a real difference in the resources you consume and, therefore, a real difference in the health of your community and the planet. Appendix B includes a blank copy of the chart below.

Omitted from sample chapter: Environmental Worksheet

Community Building Goals

Getting to know your neighbors, coworkers, and friends you might not have met yet is another way that sharing can improve your quality of life.

If participating more in the life of your community, or being part of building community yourself, is one of your reasons for sharing, here is a worksheet with examples that will help you start thinking about what might work in your own life. A blank copy is in Appendix B.

Omitted from sample chapter: Community Building Worksheet

Goals Related to Getting Help

You may have noticed that many of the suggestions in the worksheets above are overlapping—for example, starting a neighborhood home improvement group is a way to save time and get to know your neighbors. Arranging a carpool saves time and reduces your carbon footprint. Many of the ideas listed above also fall into the category of getting help—with projects (home improvement), with caring for others (sharing a caregiver or nanny), or with learning a skill (starting a group to share skills at your workplace). Use the chart below to consider the things you might need help with. Our version includes some examples; you’ll find a blank copy in Appendix B.

What Can Be Shared?

Now that you’ve thought out why you want to share, it’s a short step to considering what you could share to meet those goals. There are unlimited ways of sharing, and nearly unlimited things to share, too. Here are some ideas.

Omitted from sample chapter: Getting Help Worksheet

Things That Can Be Shared

You can share ownership or use of tangible objects, like:

• a vehicle, including a car, truck, motorcycle, motor scooter, or RV
• a bicycle or scooter
• a canoe, kayak, paddleboat, or surfboard
• a boat or airplane
• household appliances, like a vacuum cleaner, washer and dryer, sewing machine, or extra refrigerator or freezer
• gardening and yard work equipment, such as a wheelbarrow, weed whacker, shovels, rakes, lawnmower, tree trimmer, or snow blower
• tools for carpentry and home repair, like a circular saw, painting equipment (tarps, rollers, brushes, and so on), a lathe, or a tile saw
• tools for working on a car or other vehicle
• an emergency preparedness kit
• recreational gear, like a tent, skis, camping stove, beach chairs and umbrella, bike rack, scuba gear, or sports equipment (bats, balls, tennis rackets, and so on)
• a work of art
• a piece of expensive jewelry, or
• clothing, such as formal wear, business attire, and specialized sports clothing (like a wetsuit or ski jacket).

You can share ownership or use of spaces, like:

• a house, apartment, condominium, or other living space
• a work space, garage, or studio
• a retail building, office space, commercial kitchen, or selling space
• a laundry or storage room, or
• outdoor space, such as a yard, garden, swimming pool, tennis or other sport court, or play equipment (like a swing set, tree house, or jungle gym).

You can share services, privileges, or subscriptions, like:

• season tickets to a sports team, music or dance series, or theater group
• subscriptions, or
• services, like a nanny, elder care worker, house cleaner, or gardener.

You can pool resources and purchasing power to bargain collectively for goods and services. For example, you could:

• form a buying club for food, dry goods, or other household staples
• cooperate to purchase things that are cheaper to buy in large quantities, such as a cord of firewood, a tank of propane fuel, or a ton of gravel, mulch, or potting soil
• form a purchasing group to bargain collectively for expensive services, such as solar power, or
• take part in community-supported agriculture, by joining with others to “adopt” a farm.

You can share your time, skills, or expertise to cooperate with others to:

• create a child care cooperative or a simple babysitting trade with one or two neighbors or friends
• establish a dog walking tradeoff
• set up a mealsharing group or trade cooking skills for something else
• carpool to work, to school, or for a long-distance trip
• start a neighborhood home improvement group, or
• offer to swap skills—for example, teach your neighbor to build a bookcase if she’ll show you how to make pasta.

Ways to Share Things

You may choose to share in many different ways, including:

• Shared ownership. Each sharer owns a part interest in something, such as a house or car.
• Shared responsibility. The sharers agree to do something together, like trade child care or hire a gardener.
• Shared use. The sharers all use something, even though everyone might not have an ownership share.

In most cases, you can set up your sharing situation in whatever way best suits your group’s needs. For example, if you’re sharing a car with another person, you could split use equally by trading off days or weeks, or you could agree that one of you gets the car more often. You could share costs equally or one of you could do the minor repairs yourself while the other foots more than half of the bill for major repairs. You could agree that other people may—or may not—borrow the car, that you’ll both chip in to buy a car seat that your kids will share or a bike rack for the roof, or that one of you will pay a bit more to buy a new hybrid in exchange for getting to claim the tax deduction. This is one of the best things about sharing: For the most part, you get to decide how to structure the arrangement.

The exception is when you are sharing something that has some kind of legal or regulatory rules attached to it. For example, many shared housing situations must be designed to comply with local laws, such as zoning restrictions that may limit how many families can share a home or how you may use property. But regardless of whether you have to consider legal issues or not, there are certain common practical and logistical issues that you should consider in any sharing situation to help you create a solid sharing plan, ensure that you meet everyone’s needs, plan for changes and unforeseeable events, and so on. These issues are covered in Chapter 3, which lists the 20 questions that every sharing group should consider.

In the chapters that follow, you’ll learn much more about these ways of sharing and the different considerations involved in each.

Your Sharing Ideas

The following worksheet is a tool for you to fill out on your own or use together with a group of people who are exploring sharing ideas together. It will help you:

• think of ways you might share and how sharing might benefit you
• think of things you already own that you might be able to share, and
• think of things that you can’t afford to own, but that you could borrow from, or purchase with, someone else. (Vacation home, anyone?)

The worksheet will also help you brainstorm ways that you can partner with others to make purchases, or cooperate with them for things like pet care and home repair. We provided examples throughout to help get you started; you’ll find a blank copy in Appendix B.

Omitted from sample chapter: "What Could I Share?" chart

Now that you’ve brainstormed and crunched some numbers and even dreamed a little, you can look over your list and decide where you want to start sharing. As is true of many things, it’s often easiest to start small, with an arrangement to share something relatively simple, like tools or appliances. If that is a success, you could move on to thinking about sharing larger or more involved things, such as a vehicle, childcare, or physical space, like a yard.

The Triple Bottom Line: The Benefits of Sharing

In the second part of this book, each chapter covers a particular type of sharing. These chapters include a section that describes your “triple bottom line.” The triple bottom line is the essence of why we share— because it’s good for our pocketbooks, it’s good for the planet, and it’s good for the social world we live in. Later chapters provide information about specific sharing scenarios, such as shared housing or a shared car. Here’s the triple bottom line as it applies to sharing in the most general sense.

Social and Personal Benefits

These are some of the ways that your life and society as a whole will be better because of sharing. For example, sharing can help everyone:

• get to know our neighbors and make neighborhoods safer
• make friends
• find resources and referrals more easily
• find new ways to relate to friends, relatives, coworkers, and neighbors
• lighten our load of responsibilities
• create more free time
• meet the needs of seniors and people with disabilities
• increase resources and opportunities for low-income households
• support small businesses and buy local
• access better nutrition, and
• access higher quality goods.

Environmental Benefits

Sharing is as green as it can be, because it:

• uses space, energy, and resources more efficiently
• reduces consumption
• reduces waste
• reduces energy use
• helps us invest in green products, alternative energy, and durable goods
• shrinks your carbon footprint
• sets a green example for others, and
• helps take cars off the road.

Financial Benefits

The financial bottom line is undoubtedly important to you. The benefits of sharing are evident here. Through sharing, you can:

• spread the cost of owning high quality and durable goods
• reduce the cost of caring for a child or other family member
• food, fuel, and supplies
• accomplish home repairs without paying for labor
• spread the risk of loss, damage, and depreciation
• share homeownership and build equity
• save money through collective buying, and
• get access to luxury items you couldn’t afford alone.

We hope that this chapter has given you lots of ideas about things you can share and the many benefits of having more sharing in your life.