‘Things In Common’: an interview with Letchworth Garden Shed

We’ve all been there. The doorbell rings and you rush to collect the package that awaits you: a new piece of equipment for a new hobby, a DIY project, a party or a particularly difficult bit of home maintenance. A sewing machine, a cake tin, a pizza oven, a drill, a pressure washer, maybe even a giant Jenga set. You’ve bought the piece of equipment for a specific task or event, and you use it once, twice, maybe three times. But then you finish your DIY project, you complete the maintenance task, the event ends and you get tired of the new hobby. Now what? That piece of equipment goes away and rarely if ever sees the light of day again, doomed to live out the rest of the year alone and forgotten.

Imagine that scenario taking place on almost every single house on a street. Imagine hundreds, thousands, millions of unused pieces of equipment at the back of cupboards and in garden sheds and garages, brought out for a yearly task or an occasional event or maybe never again.

Sustainable? Not so much.

We spoke to volunteers at Letchworth Garden Shed in Hertfordshire to find out why our current model of consumption isn’t working – and what we can do to make it better.

“It’s a waste of resources and a waste of money,” explains Andrew, one of the Letchworth Garden Shed Managers and volunteers. “Other people could be getting benefit from the use of that equipment. It’s greener if people are sharing. […] Why buy 10 drills, when one will suffice?”

“Why buy 10 drills, when one will suffice?”

Luckily, the solution is simple – and in this small town in Hertfordshire, it’s thriving. The Letchworth Garden Shed, a community interest company which opened its doors in 2023, asks locals to consider borrowing a range of items from their community hub instead of always buying something new. Part of a growing movement of ‘libraries of things’, the Garden Shed works just like any other library – but instead of borrowing a book, you can borrow wide range of DIY equipment, garden games, cooking appliances, crafting materials and more.

And the Shed is not alone. Across the world, this new type of library is growing in popularity as part of a new ‘sharing economy’ where resources are held in common, borrowed, maintained and reused over and over again by a local community. According to the Ethical Consumer directory, there are already almost 100 of these libraries across the UK – and hundreds of other locations have been requested through the Library of Things campaign website, where residents can show their support for a library near them.

The Shed has sustainability at its core, with the items in stock donated from local residents and businesses and even parts of its interior being upcycled from other materials.

During our interview, I get to see these core values in action in the Shed itself. “Most of the storage that you can see around you is recycled,” Andrew says, gesturing at the shelves that surround us. “We make creative use of things we find. All of the shelves are made of repurposed timber, we’ve got a couple of tables in there, and we’re going to build a big rack out of them.”

The Shed also has a pragmatic benefit for people using it: lower costs and lower demands on limited storage space. “For the kinds of thing that we stock, you certainly don’t want to keep them, you certainly don’t want to pay for them, and you certainly don’t want to store them,” Andrew explains. As many of the items are large, bulky or expensive – like specialist DIY equipment or crafting items – borrowing an item for a limited time costs just a tiny fraction of the cost of buying the item new.

“This is a really tangible, reasonably priced way to be greener.”

 “I think loads of initiatives of products that are sold as approaches to being greener are actually more expensive, and it can feel quite hard to take positive actions for the environment,” points out Charlie, one of the Letchworth Garden Shed Board Members and volunteer coordinator. “Whereas this is a really tangible, reasonably priced way to be greener.”

Most of the items in the shed are just £1 or £4 to borrow – per week. Even the most expensive items – like a pizza oven or an entire silent disco kit – are a mere £12 to borrow per week. “You have to make it a really good alternative,” Charlie says. “Because it’s actually really easy to buy stuff, isn’t it? […] So we need it to be attractive for people to make that choice.”

Part of the reason that the Garden Shed can make their items so affordable for everyone is its strong connection to other businesses, organisations and charities in the local area – the Shed has had practical help, funding grants, business support and donations from a range of partners. Even better, their partnerships with the housing associations have also allowed the Shed to make their services available to everyone, regardless of income.

“We have a standard membership, which is £10 for a year,” Andrew explains. “But we have relationships with the local housing associations, and they have prepaid memberships for their tenants.” Inclusivity and accessibility to the Shed’s services have been at the core of the Shed’s model, and for those who might not be living in social housing but still can’t afford the £10 per year household fee, there is yet another option. “We have a giving tree, where we’ve had some donations made to us. And if you can’t afford the £10, you come in, take a leaf off the tree, and we give you a membership. We’re very keen not to exclude people by price.”

“If you can’t afford the £10, you come in, take a leaf off the tree, and we give you a membership. We’re very keen not to exclude people by price.”

Of course, using items sustainably isn’t just about where you get them from and how you store them. It’s also about how long you keep the item for. In a circular economy, repairing and reusing items should always come first, perhaps followed by upcycling or dismantling for parts – but throwing an item out should always be a last resort.

The Letchworth Garden Shed doesn’t just hire out items – it helps to make sure that objects we already own stay longer in circulation, too, through a series of events called ‘The Big Fix’ – a type of repair café adapted from the international repair café movement. Charlie, the Big Fix manager, explains: “It’s an opportunity for skilled volunteers who have been fixing things their entire lives to give back to the community. […] So it might be that your shirts got a rip, or it might be your lamp doesn’t turn on, or your radio doesn’t work. And you book it in and one of our volunteers will look at it and try and fix it for you. And they do that on a donation basis, so it’s free.” The Garden Shed has only run two of these events so far, but has already fixed more than 50 items and plans to run about four per year going forward.

Aside from bringing the external community together and developing partnerships with the broader community ecosystem of businesses, charities and public authorities, the Garden Shed also creates its own form of community by its very nature.

For Charlie, who balances her volunteer role at the Shed with her freelance career, getting involved as a volunteer was a way of reconnecting to the place she lives while having worked in the charity sector and in London for many years. “When you commute into London every day, you don’t necessarily have those community connections. So I was kind of keen to do that.” The community spirit created through the first few months of the Shed’s opening was particularly evident after the first Big Fix event, where the months of planning blossomed into a successful event. “It feels so much more than a place where you just got stuff fixed. It was like genuine community.”

“It feels so much more than a place where you just got stuff fixed. It was like genuine community.”

Andrew, too, has seen the real-life impact of his volunteering play out through the Shed’s offering. “There have been a couple of occasions where we’ve really bailed someone out,” he remembers. On one such occasion, the Garden Shed was able to lend a more comfortable wheelchair to someone in significant discomfort from the wheelchair he’d been provided. “We moved him into the one with the big wheels, and […] we saw the change of expression on his face. And that made it all worthwhile.”

The Garden Shed seems to have it all: sustainability, circular economy, and community-building. It is also responding to the changes we are seeing on our high streets, and the need for different types of services and events to bring people into our town centres. I’m curious to know whether Charlie and Andrew think that the ‘library of things’ model could work anywhere – and if it could be the solution to our present-day overconsumption problem.

“I think they need to be moulded and shaped by the community in which they exist,” Charlie says. “It works here because it’s built by the people that live here, for the people that live here. If you take that ethos, it could work anywhere, and there’s loads of examples of it.”

“It’s built by the people that live here, for the people that live here.”

Andrew agrees. He has often been approached by people who wish there was such an organisation in their own town, or who want to set up their own. And his message to anyone considering it is clear: “Talk to the organisation that coordinates across libraries of things, but also come and talk to us, and we’ll tell you what mistakes we’ve made.” This element of knowledge-sharing and building connections not only within the local community but between communities and other libraries of things is another key part of the Garden Shed’s mission and their theory of change.

“We’re evolving all the time,” Charlie adds. “We’re learning from the experience and we’re challenging the things we do and evolving processes and practices.”

Having already exceeded their yearly targets for membership sign-ups in just six months of being open, the future is looking bright for this new library… proof, perhaps, that having ‘things in common’ is the future?

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Just for fun: our favourite items from the Garden Shed

• Charlie: “I’m really excited in a very geeky way about the overlocker. I want to be a wannabe dressmaker. My mum was a textiles teacher and my nan a court dressmaker. My skills are a bit lower than that, but I’ve always wanted to try the overlocker.”
• Andrew: “I’m really excited to see that someone’s booked the space hoppers! How wonderful is that? That’s something I donated. And we’ve got a drum kit – an electronic drum kit so you can play with headphones and it doesn’t disturb the neighbours – and someone’s just extended their rental on that today.”  
• Emma: “I’m most excited for when it gets warmer, and I can borrow all of the garden games! And the bread machine will be wonderful, I’m looking forward to making lots of fresh bread.”