Five Things I Stopped Buying After Building SharedOut.

 

I want to be clear about something before I write this post.

I am not a minimalist. I have never been a minimalist. I am the person who bought a bread machine for my wife in 2019 because a YouTube video made it look therapeutic for her, used it four times, and then quietly relocated it to the back of the storeroom where it has been living peacefully ever since, judging her every time I open the door.

I am also the person who built an entire app around the idea that people should stop buying things they don't really need.

The irony is not lost on me.

But here's the thing about building SharedOut — it has genuinely changed the way I think about buying things. Not in a dramatic, life-altering, declutter-your-soul kind of way. Just in a quiet, practical, "actually, do I really need to own this?" kind of way.

Here are five things I stopped buying after I built SharedOut. Said with love, and with full acknowledgement that I probably should have figured all of this out earlier.

1. Specialist kitchen equipment for one recipe

The bread machine was the beginning. Not the end.

Since then I have also purchased, with great enthusiasm and minimal follow-through: a fruit juicer (used a few times, hated the cleaning up), an electric fondue set (bought for a dinner party, used for that dinner party, never touched again), a mandoline slicer (Still use it once in awhile but prefer knives as it is much faster), and a waffle machine that I'm not sure I ever fully understood why i bought it in the first place.

Every single one of these was bought because I needed it for a specific dish, a specific occasion, or a specific phase of optimism about my cooking ambitions.

Every single one of them now lives in the storeroom with the bread machine.

The thing is — every time I needed any of these items, what I actually needed was the item for approximately one afternoon. I didn't need to own it permanently. I didn't need it to take up shelf space in my kitchen for the next four years. I needed it on a Tuesday for a dinner party, and then I needed to give it back to someone.

SharedOut is quite literally built for this. The moment I truly understood that was when I realised I had personally spent somewhere in the region of S$400 on kitchen equipment I could have borrowed for under S$30 combined.

The Fruit Juicer remains in the storeroom. It is listed on SharedOut now. Someone borrowed it last month. I am genuinely happy for them.

2. Tools for home improvement projects

I need to tell you something about home improvement projects.

They always — always — require one more tool than you own.

Every renovation, every installation, every "this should be simple" weekend project has taught me the same lesson: you will buy a drill, discover you need a specific drill bit, buy the specific drill bit, discover you actually needed a different specific drill bit, buy that one, complete the job, and then store all three items in a toolbox you will never open again until you move house.

I have a very complete toolbox. I use it approximately twice a year. It contains: two drills (long story), four sets of drill bits in varying stages of completeness, a spirit level, a stud finder that I used correctly exactly once, three types of screwdriver sets with significant overlap, a rubber mallet I bought for a flat-pack furniture project in 2021, and a tile cutter that I genuinely cannot explain.

The combined cost of items I have bought for home improvement projects and used fewer than three times is something I have deliberately chosen not to calculate, because I believe some knowledge is genuinely harmful to your wellbeing.

What I now do: borrow from neighbours on SharedOut.

The drill I need for thirty minutes costs S$8 for the day. My neighbour's toolbox has exactly the right bit. He's happy someone is using it. I'm happy I don't have to find room for it. Everyone is having a better time than they were before.

3. Folding chairs

This one is almost embarrassing in retrospect.

Every time we host a gathering — Chinese New Year, a birthday, a family dinner that expands beyond what our dining table was designed for — we hit the same problem. Not enough chairs. We buy four more folding chairs, store them for eleven months, retrieve them for the next gathering, wonder where the fourth one went, buy another one, and repeat the cycle.

I currently own seven folding chairs. I have no memory of buying most of them. They materialised over years of hosting, like sediment. They live in a corner of the storeroom that has become, without any planning on my part, exclusively dedicated to folding chairs.

When I built the "party supplies" category for SharedOut, I was partly thinking of myself. A set of ten folding chairs for one Saturday afternoon costs almost nothing to borrow. They arrive, they serve their purpose, they go home. Nobody has to find storage for them. Nobody acquires a chair they will never use again.

Seven folding chairs. In a Singapore HDB storeroom.

I am the person SharedOut was built for.

4. Outdoor and sports equipment for phases

Everyone has phases.

Mine have included, at various points: camping (bought a full tent, sleeping bag, and portable stove — went camping twice), badminton (four rackets, a shuttlecock tube, a net — played for one summer), cycling (a bicycle that was the right kind of bicycle for two months before I decided I preferred walking), and golf (let's not talk about the golf).

Each phase began with conviction. Each phase ended with equipment.

The equipment remains. The conviction does not.

The camping gear is particularly poignant because it is genuinely good quality and sits in an airtight bag doing absolutely nothing, which feels like a waste of everyone's time including the bag's.

What I have come to understand — slightly too late for my storeroom but just in time for SharedOut — is that phases should be tested before they are purchased. Borrow the camping gear first. If you go camping and love it and cannot stop thinking about going again, then buy the tent. If you go camping and spend the whole time wishing you were in a hotel, the gear goes home to its actual owner and you have lost nothing except the bus fare to Pasir Ris.

SharedOut makes phase-testing almost frictionless. Which is either very good for you or very bad for the camping equipment industry, depending on how you look at it.

5. Baby and kids items that have a six-month shelf life

This one is less self-deprecating and more genuinely obvious in retrospect.

Children grow. This is widely known. It is also, apparently, something that does not fully register until you have spent S$350 on a baby cot that your child outgrows in eight months and then sits disassembled in the storeroom for two years because you're not sure whether to sell it or keep it in case of a hypothetical future sibling.

The stroller. The high chair. The playpen. The bouncer. The activity mat that babies enjoy for approximately four months before losing all interest. The baby monitor you bought before you realised sound travels perfectly well through a Singapore HDB flat.

All of it purchased new. All of it used for a finite, knowable, predictable window of time. All of it now occupying storeroom real estate that could be used for something else — if only there was something else, because the storeroom is mostly baby equipment.

What makes this particularly avoidable is that the idle window is actually the most predictable thing in the world. A newborn will outgrow a cot in about a year. A child will need a bicycle in a certain size range for about two years. The stroller phase has a beginning and an end that you can see coming from months away.

SharedOut was built precisely for the idle window. List it for the gap. Earn from it while it waits. Take it back when the younger sibling arrives. Nobody buys anything they didn't need to buy. Nobody stores anything they didn't need to store.

I know this because I built the app. I also know this because I have a cot in my storeroom.

The honest conclusion

Building SharedOut has not turned me into a person who owns less. My storeroom remains a source of mild existential concern. The bread machine is still there, even if it is occasionally borrowed now.

But it has genuinely changed how I think before I buy something. The question I ask now — which I did not ask before — is whether I need to own this or whether I need to use it once.

It's a small question. The answer is often surprising.

If you'd like to see what's available to borrow near you — or list something that's living quietly in your storeroom — SharedOut is where to start.

sharedout.com.sg

Share it. Share in. Shared Out.

SharedOut is Singapore's peer-to-peer community sharing app for HDB neighbourhoods — borrow tools, book home-based services, and earn from what you own, all within 500 metres of home. Download on the App Store and Google Play, or visit sharedout.com.sg

Location: Singapore

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