The Borrowed Year: A Drill, a Fondue Set and the Neighbours We Finally Met

There is a particular kind of pause that happens when you are standing in a village hall on a wet Tuesday, holding a cordless drill that does not belong to you. You look at the little label on the case, the sign-out sheet, the volunteer with the flask, and you think: this is either a quietly brilliant idea or the beginning of a very complicated year.

We went with quietly brilliant. This time last year, after one too many conversations about cupboards full of things we used twice and forgot, we joined our local Library of Things. The premise is simple: borrow the drill, the steam cleaner, the projector, the cake tin shaped like a dinosaur, and give it back when you’re done. No loft archaeology. No guilt. Just a shared shelf and a rota.

What followed was a year of small saves, minor chaos and some unexpectedly lovely encounters with people we had previously only nodded at over the wheelie bins.

The first borrow: a drill and a lesson in asking

Joe had been talking about buying a drill for roughly three years. Not because we had a drilling emergency, but because it felt like the sort of thing a proper household ought to own. Then the shelf above the boiler needed fixing, and the Library of Things had a drill, two bits and a very reassuring instruction card.

He brought it home like a trophy. I made tea. He drilled four holes, fixed the shelf, and returned it the next morning with the bits wiped clean. The whole thing cost us less than a takeaway. More importantly, it broke a habit. We had been treating ownership as the default and borrowing as the fallback. For a small job, it turns out, borrowing is often the whole point.

The volunteer on the desk was a man called Martin, who knew exactly which drill bit to use on old plaster and told us so at length. We now say hello to Martin in the Co-op. That is not nothing.

The dehydrator phase, and the banana chips

In February, I borrowed a dehydrator. I had a vision of neat jars of apple rings and herbs, a pantry that looked like a lifestyle magazine. What I actually produced was a lot of slightly leathery banana chips and one batch of tomato slices that never quite forgave me.

But here’s the thing: I had a go. I did not spend £70 on a machine that would live in the garage next to the bread maker. I borrowed it, used it for five days, admitted that I am not a person who dehydrates, and returned it. That is a very cheap way to learn a lesson about yourself.

The dehydrator also came with a handwritten note from a previous borrower: “Best for apple rings. Do not bother with strawberries.” I have never met this person, but I trust them completely.

The fondue set and the case for occasional ridiculousness

By spring, we were scanning the shelf with the enthusiasm of people who had discovered a new aisle. We borrowed a fondue set for a birthday tea. It was unnecessary, slightly retro and absolutely the right thing to do on a cold Saturday when nobody wanted to go out.

We invited two neighbours, the ones we usually only talk to when a parcel goes astray. They brought bread and a slightly suspicious attitude to melted cheese, and by the end of the evening we were planning a summer street table. The fondue set did not just save us from buying a fondue set. It gave us a reason to knock on a door.

That became the pattern of the year. The practical borrowings saved money. The ridiculous ones made memories. The Library of Things turned out to be less about stuff and more about permission: permission to try something, to host something, to admit you don’t need to own it afterwards.

The slip-ups: late returns and missing bits

It was not all neatly labelled boxes. We were late back with a pressure washer by two days because of rain, and spent an anxious morning wondering whether we had become The Sort of People Who Keep Things. We lost a small attachment for a hand whisk and had to confess at the desk. The volunteer shrugged and said, “It happens. We’ll find it.”

There is a gentle accountability to borrowing. You cannot shove it in a drawer and forget it. You have to remember, return, check. It made us slightly more organised, or at least more aware of our own chaos. We also learned that a shared item comes with a little social contract. You look after it because someone else will need it next. You put it back how you found it because that is the whole bargain.

What it did to our cupboards and our street

We added up our borrowing over the year: a drill, a steam cleaner, a projector for a backyard film night, a slow cooker, the dehydrator, the fondue set and a very large cake tin. Roughly, we saved a couple of hundred pounds against buying new. But the bigger change was in our heads.

We now ask a different question before buying anything: could we borrow this, hire it, or ask a neighbour? The answer is often yes. Our cupboards are calmer. The loft is still a mess, but it is a mess of our own making, not a graveyard of optimistic purchases.

And then there are the people. We know Martin’s drill advice. We know the fondue neighbours. We know the woman who borrows the projector for her film club and always returns it with the cable neatly looped. In a year when it would have been easy to stay inside and order things to our door, a shared shelf nudged us out.

Would we do it again?

Yes. Not because it is perfect — the opening hours are limited, the popular things go quickly, and you do need to plan a bit. But it fits ordinary UK life surprisingly well. Most of us do not need to own a steam cleaner every day of the year. We just need to know where one lives.

As we head towards the end of 2026, the drill has gone back, the fondue set is on someone else’s table, and our shelf at home is a little emptier. We are not converts to owning nothing. We still have our favourite mug, the good scissors and a drawer of useful bits. But we are converts to borrowing first. It turns out a shared drill can teach you quite a lot about your neighbours — and about how little you actually need to keep.