I own a drill. It lives in a hard plastic case in the cupboard under the stairs, next to a box of wall plugs in sizes I have never needed. I bought it seven years ago to put up a shelf. Since then I have used it four times. I know this because I remember each occasion, and because each time I had to find the charger.
This is not a confession of laziness. It is a fairly typical relationship between a person and a tool. We buy things for the job we have now and keep them for jobs that may never come.
The cost of never asking
The real price of the drill was not the money. It was the conversation I did not have. If I had not bought it, I would have had to ask someone: a neighbour, a friend, the tool library down the road. I would have had to admit that I did not own one, arrange to collect it, and bring it back. I would have owed someone a small favour.
Owning is a way of never having to ask. That is its great convenience, and its quiet cost. Every object we buy so that we do not have to borrow is a small thread of dependence that we have cut, and a small conversation we have not had.
A city of cupboards
Multiply my drill by every household on my street, and you get a strange picture: dozens of identical tools, sitting in dozens of cupboards, each used for a few minutes a year. The same is true of ladders, pasta machines, suitcases, sewing machines and the camping gear that emerges for one week every summer. Our homes are full, and yet in a sense they are full of the same things.
Borrowing is not a new idea. Villages have always shared tools, and families have always passed down coats and cots. What is new is how unusual it has come to feel, and how much we have organised our lives around never needing anyone else.
Keeping people within reach
I am not going to throw my drill away. That would be a waste of a perfectly good drill. But the next time I need something I will use twice, I am going to try asking first. It will be slower. It will occasionally be awkward. It might, if the tool library is right, lead to a jar of jam.
The goal is not to own nothing. It is to own a little less, and to keep a few more people within reach.
Owning is a way of never having to ask.
