The drill sitting in your closet is not a tool. It is a $89 monument to a single afternoon you spent assembling a bookshelf three years ago.

Maya, a 34-year-old graphic designer in Austin, realized this when she moved into her second apartment in four years. She counted the tools she owned: one drill, one level, one set of Allen wrenches. She counted the times she had used the drill: twice. She did the math. Each use had cost her $44.50. She could have rented one from her local Home Depot for $15 a day, used it both times, and kept $59 in her pocket.

She is not unusual. She is the norm. And the infrastructure building up around her is starting to make the drill purchase look less like a smart investment and more like a habit nobody has bothered to question yet.

Here is what nobody tells you: the sharing economy is no longer just about cars and spare bedrooms. It has quietly restructured itself around the tools, appliances, and equipment that sit unused in millions of closets, garages, and storage units across the country. And the people paying attention are spending less, owning less, and living with considerably more breathing room.

1. Library of Things Programs Have Gone Mainstream

As of 2025, more than 1,000 public library systems in the United States offer a Library of Things program, according to the American Library Association. These programs loan out tools, kitchen appliances, musical instruments, camping gear, and in some cases, 3D printers. Free. On a library card. The Cleveland Public Library loans out power drills, circular saws, and stud finders. The San Francisco Public Library loans out sewing machines and bread makers.

The cultural shift here is significant. The library was already the original sharing economy. It just took sixty years for someone to notice that the model worked and start applying it to objects that are not books.

2. Per-Use Cost Math Has Changed the Conversation

How many times will you realistically use this tool before it breaks, gets replaced, or becomes outdated? That question used to feel rhetorical. Now it has a framework.

Quick Math: A $89 drill purchased for 3 uses costs $29.67 per use. The same drill rented at $15 per day costs $45 total for those same 3 uses. At 3 uses, ownership and renting are nearly equal — but the rental requires zero storage, zero maintenance, and zero money tied up between uses. At 6+ uses, ownership begins to win on pure math. Below 6, renting is almost always the better financial position. Maya’s number was 2. Her per-use cost was $44.50. Her break-even point was somewhere she was never going to reach.

This framework, increasingly called “use-cost analysis” in personal finance circles, is showing up in budgeting conversations in ways it never did before. A 2024 survey by Bankrate found that 61% of Americans who regret a purchase say they overestimated how often they would use the item. The drill is the canonical example. But so is the stand mixer, the camping tent, and the pressure washer.

3. Peer-to-Peer Rental Platforms Have Solved the Friction Problem

The old objection to renting tools was logistical. Where do you go? How do you return it? What if it breaks? Platforms like Fat Llama, Neighbor, and Loanables have reduced that friction to roughly what it takes to order a package from Amazon. You search, you book, you pick up or receive delivery, you return. A 2023 PwC report estimated the peer-to-peer rental market would reach $113 billion globally by 2025. That number suggests this is not a niche trend. That is infrastructure quietly reorganizing itself around a different assumption about ownership.

4. The Apartment Economy Has Rewritten the Use-Case

The United States Census Bureau reported in 2024 that the median length of stay in a rental apartment is now 2.1 years. Maya’s two moves in four years are not anomalous. They are the median experience. And when you are moving every two years, the calculus on ownership changes completely. Heavy tools become relocation costs. Storage space becomes a premium. The question stops being “could I use this eventually?” and starts being “do I want to move this again?”

Did You Know: According to a 2024 Urban Institute report, renters now make up 36% of all U.S. households. That is the highest share recorded since 1965. The lifestyle infrastructure of American life is being rebuilt around people who move. Tool ownership was designed for people who stay.

5. The Emotional Purchase Is the Real Target

Here is the part that takes a little honesty to say. Most people buying a drill are not buying a drill. They are buying the feeling of being the kind of person who has a drill. Competent. Prepared. Self-sufficient. Those are real and valid motivations. But you can be all of those things without the drill sitting in your closet for three years collecting dust. The feeling and the object have been uncoupled. The sharing economy did not cause that. It just made it visible.

I have been in that exact conversation with myself. Standing in a hardware store aisle, holding a box, feeling like a responsible adult. It is not a comfortable thing to examine.

6. Budget and Premium Options Now Exist for Every Use Tier

Before you decide whether to rent or own, it helps to know what tier you actually belong to.

For occasional users — fewer than six times per year — the smart moves are library programs, Home Depot Tool Rental (starting at $15 per day for basic drills), and peer-to-peer platforms. No maintenance, no storage, no depreciation.

What tier are you actually in? Before you click Add to Cart, ask yourself honestly: when was the last time you reached for a drill and it was not there?

For moderate users in the six-to-twenty range, a budget cordless drill like the BLACK+DECKER 20V MAX ($49–$65) makes sense. It covers most household tasks without the price of professional-grade equipment.

For genuine power users above twenty uses per year — contractors, serious DIYers, people who are actually remodeling something — the DeWalt ATOMIC 20V MAX ($119–$139) or Milwaukee M18 line ($149+) are worth owning. The per-use cost drops to reasonable levels, and the quality difference matters at that frequency.

Pro Tip: If you are buying a cordless drill for the first time, check whether anyone in your household already owns tools in a particular battery ecosystem (DeWalt 20V, Milwaukee M18, Ryobi ONE+). Batteries are often the most expensive component. A drill that uses a battery you already own costs significantly less in practice than its retail price suggests.

7. The People Who Own Less Are Not Depriving Themselves

This is the part the ownership culture has always gotten wrong. The narrative around not owning tools implies sacrifice. Impermanence. Some kind of minimalist hairshirt. The data does not support that. A 2024 Harris Poll found that 58% of Americans who describe themselves as “intentional consumers” — people who actively evaluate purchases against actual use — report higher satisfaction with their homes than self-described “stock-up” buyers. They are not suffering. They are the ones who have stopped apologizing for living in an apartment, moving when it makes sense, and renting a drill for $15 on the two occasions per year they actually need one.

Your Next 3 Steps

Step 1. This week, search your local library’s catalog for a Library of Things program. It takes about four minutes. If your library has one, add it to your contacts now, before the next time you are standing in a hardware store aisle. Maya found hers thirty seconds into a Google search. She had walked past that library three times a week for two years.

Step 2. Pull up your last 12 months of home repair history and count how many times you used a drill, or wished you had one. Write the actual number down. Then run the per-use cost calculation from the Quick Math box above using your real number. If you land below six uses, the math is already telling you something.

Step 3. Rent before you buy once in the next 30 days. Pick one item you would normally purchase automatically — the drill, the pressure washer, the whatever — and rent it instead. Track whether the friction was actually as bad as you imagined. Maya thought it would be inconvenient. It took her eleven minutes. The $59 she kept is still in her account.

The sharing economy did not take anything from you. It just gave you the option to stop paying $44.50 per use for something you borrow from yourself twice a year. Whether you take that option is entirely up to you. But now you have the math, and you cannot unknow it. For more on making your money reflect your actual life rather than your aspirational one, Why Designer Flipping Stopped Paying in 2026 is worth your time. And if the deeper question here is about how your spending patterns connect to identity and belonging, Stop Waiting for the Scaffolding: Build Belonging Without Church asks a version of the same question from a completely different angle.