Neighborgoods – Share Your Stuff

Need to use a drill for the afternoon, but hesitant to fork over $200 for a tool you’ll only use once? Neighborgoods is an application that can hook you up. The neighborhood swapping and sharing website encourages people to connect with strangers in their communities to borrow all the items that they don’t want to buy themselves. By offering a helping hand to their neighbors, Neighborgoods lenders can hopefully feel good about themselves and save money if they’re ever on the receiving end of the swapping process in the future.

Unlike eBay, Neighborgoods doesn’t expect anyone to mail anything anywhere. Instead, the application asks you to input your zip code and then brings up a page with all the most recent swapping activity in your surrounding area. Start scrolling down the “Share Your Stuff” list and click the boxes on the right hand size for each item you’ve got stuffed away in a closet and don’t mind lending out for a couple of hours or days. You can also create an inventory of all the items you’ve got stored away that you’re willing to share. To borrow other people’s items, head over to the “Find Stuff” page and type in whatever it is you need. You’ll see a list of available items, with a “Borrow” button on the right hand side.

Neighborgoods let’s you decide whether to offer the item for free or to charge a rental fee, and makes it possible for lenders to only share their goods with “verified” users who’ve paid Neighborgoods’ $4.99 fee. As an added bit of protection, the site never gives out its users’ home addresses. When it comes time to swap items, it lets the lender decide where the pick up/drop off should go down. For anyone looking for a way to save money on the items they’ll only use once, Neighborgoods is an awesome application to check out.