23: Borrow Before You Buy — Sharing, Renting, and the Circular Economy with LEND-IT.CA

Do you really need to own everything? From ladders and camping gear to canning supplies and extra tables, so many of the things cluttering our homes only get used once or twice a year. What if borrowing — instead of buying — became our default?

For Circular Economy Month, this episode looks at how sharing, renting, and borrowing can strengthen our communities while cutting down on overconsumption. This week I am joined by Tim Sattler, the founder of LEND-IT.CA, a rental marketplace that connects neighbours and local businesses so people can access what they need without buying new.

Tim shares how his small-town upbringing and military experience inspired him to create a platform that makes sustainable choices more convenient. We talk about how borrowing keeps value in our communities, why convenience is key to lasting behaviour change, and how rethinking ownership can make life simpler for families.

Takeaways

• How a small-town mindset of borrowing and helping neighbours led to the creation of LEND-IT.CA
• Why convenience is essential if we want eco-friendly choices to stick.
• The role of renting in reducing waste, clutter, and costs — especially in suburban homes.
• How LEND-IT.CA connects individuals and small rental businesses to keep value local.
• How renting and borrowing locally supports the circular economy.
• Practical examples of borrowing for family life — from sports equipment and DIY tools to party décor and camping gear.
• How trying before buying can help families save money and prevent unwanted purchases.

One Small Shift

Before you click “buy now,” pause for a moment. Do you really need to own that item? Could you borrow it from a neighbour or rent it locally instead? Trying before buying is one small shift that keeps money in your community, reduces waste, and helps build a stronger community for all.

Connect with Tim Sattler

LEND-IT.CA (website)

App Store

Google Play

Facebook

Instagram

Resources

Lend What You Have, Borrow What You Need (blog post)

Circular Innovation Council

Transcript

0:00

Do we really need to own everything from ladders to camping gear to tools and party supplies? So many of the things cluttering our homes only get used once or twice a year. What if instead of buying new, you could borrow them from someone nearby? Welcome to Sustainable in the Suburbs, a podcast for the eco curious who want to live a greener life and are looking for a place to start. I'm your host, Sarah Robertson Barnes, a soccer mom with a station wagon and a passion for sustainable living. Each week I'll bring you practical tips and honest conversations to help you waste less, save money, and make small doable shifts that actually fit your real life. Because sustainable living doesn't have to be perfect to matter, and you don't have to do it all to make a difference. Hello, and welcome back to Sustainable in the Suburbs, the podcast where we start where we are, use what we have, and live a little greener, one small shift at a time. My name is Sarah, and I'm glad to be hanging out with you today. Before we get started, just a few reminders on how you can help support the show. You can subscribe, rate, or leave a review anywhere you're listening to this. You can share this episode with a friend or on social media, and you can find me on all the things at Sarah Robertson Barnes. And as we are heading into the holiday season, there will be a lot more tips on my newsletter, so make sure that you're on that. And you can find links to everything I talk about today down in the show notes. Your support for the show is awesome and it really means the world to me. With October coming to a close and with that circular economy month here in Canada, I've been reflecting a lot on this year's theme, the stronger community for all. It made me think about all of the things in my own home that only get used once or twice a year. The canning gear at the end of the summer, the camping gear that maybe gets used every other year. What if instead of buying and storing everything ourselves, borrowing and renting became our default. What would that mean for our homes, our wallets and our communities? My guest this week is Tim Sattler, the founder of LendIt, Canada's rental marketplace. Tim grew up in a small town where if you needed something, the first step was knocking on a neighbor's front door. And he's carried that community first mindset into the work he's doing today. In our conversation, he shares the story behind LendIt, why convenience matters so much for building sustainable choices. and how borrowing instead of buying can help us build stronger, more resilient communities. Here's my conversation with Tim. Hey Tim, welcome to Sustainable in the Suburbs. I'm so glad to have you here today. Sarah, happy to be here. So to start us off, can you share a little bit about yourself and your story? Yes, my name is Tim Sattler. I was born in small towns in Ontario. Anyone's familiar with Plattsville, about a thousand people. So I grew up in a pretty small tight-knit community uh where everyone kind of knows each other, helps each other out. I was very interested in nature since I was young and growing up. The two things that I was used to kind of watch were nature documentaries and military documentaries with my grandpa, kind of both aspects. And so growing up, my two kind of uh passions were nature and the military, is kind of conflicting in some ways, but it's just kind of how it goes. Moving forward in life, joined the military when I was 22 after going to the University of Guelph. I am still an active member and have been since 2016. And then in 2022, we came up with the idea for LendAsher.ca within our family and we decided that we were, it was something that we wanted to pursue. After having one of the large storms in Ottawa, which took down a bunch of trees, kind of very quickly realized we're privileged enough to have the tools to deal with this issue. But it doesn't mean that other people in our community are. And if they don't know anyone, how do they get access to these items? Growing up in a small town kind of comes as just a way of life that you work with your neighbors, you know your neighbors, you help each other out. But as you move into bigger cities and different communities that you aren't aware of, how do you get access to those and how do you foster that same sense of community? And that's really kind of where Len-Dacier stems from. So you do grow up in that small town where it's knocking on the front door was the solution to if you needed something. Does that like shape how you think about community today now that you are in that bigger city? Would you still knock on the door? I think it's something that it's actually taken a little bit time for me to even adjust to not feeling as comfortable because you're not throwing up around all those same people, the same families. And I think it kind of has caused even maybe wider societal issues. If you look at today, everyone's very isolated. Even in the cities, I think people are more isolated than ever, even though there's more people around. And so it's something that even as I work through, it would be nice to have something that naturally brings people together a little bit more than they currently are, if that makes sense. You also mentioned that you are in the Canadian Armed Forces and I'm curious about, you said, you know, that's a kind of a contrast, but I think how does that teach you about planning and stewardship and working with limited resources? It definitely does. So I have a lot of experience in plans and operations management. And so certainly I don't necessarily have a business background, but a lot of the lessons that I've learned through my experiences in the military helped set me up in terms of how to start and run a business. And as well, more than anything, I think it gave me the confidence to pursue this option after being thrust into many scenarios where I didn't have all the details and necessarily fully understand the role of what was happening, but you have to figure it out very quickly and that gives you a lot of self-confidence to pursue other areas in your life as well. So I'm curious why you decided to make renting the default versus just like straight up sharing like, well, why would that be the mission that you wanted to build around? So our thought process was one, there needs to be incentive on both for both the lenders and the borrowers because I think there's a lot of really great initiatives through a lot of environmentally friendly groups throughout Canada and North America, even the world that are focused on trying to develop the circular economy, develop more recycling and options. But the issue is there's only a certain portion of society in each country that is really dedicated to actually, you know, executing on that and actually pursuing that. You know, modern day society, I think we are so busy all the time. And I think it's kind of constructed in that way for us always to be busier. Things always get more expensive. You have to work more jobs. Everybody has to have a side hustle. So in a world where only getting busier, how do we make the environmentally friendly choice available to people at that same level of convenience. I say like people get convenience is a bad term. I don't think it's a bad thing. I don't think it's being lazy. I think it's just being practical in a lot of situations. If you're raising a family or you're working two jobs, when are you going to have that time to go and pursue the eco-friendly option that you have to go research yourself or spend that extra time or go that extra few miles? It's just not practical in a lot of situations. And so due to that, we hoped let's build a platform where the green option and the environmentally friendly option is actually just as convenient potentially, if not more so than Amazon. If I need a tool and I'm only going to use it once, I potentially rent it off somebody two doors down. It takes five minutes to get. And on top of that, it's significantly cheaper than having to buy it wait for Amazon to ship it to you. So that's kind of the concept that we were working with and why we want to do a paid option because we want to incentivize both people who do want to pursue this for environmental reasons, but also people that just maybe want to make a little extra money or save some money in the process. Yeah, I was just thinking that, that I think so many of us do want to make greener choices, but like day to day life is just so busy or complicated or inconvenient. And especially when Amazon is the default option, we can have a similar option that everybody has everything that we could ever need, probably within a five kilometer radius of us, if we're living in a suburban or an urban area. So when you look at the way most of us live in the suburbs, we have homes just full of just in case items. what opportunities do you see there and like are there any challenges to that? something that I challenge a lot of people to think about is look at the inventory of everything that you have in your house right now. How many of those items do you actually use on a daily basis? Especially when we get into let's say tools or camping gear, party supplies, decor, you might use those once a month, once every six months, once a year, maybe once every couple years, but you're sitting there laying onto it. So Why not take those items, post them, make some money, actually monetize them, and vice versa. You're giving somebody down the street who doesn't have that whole inventory sitting in their basement an opportunity to borrow from you and save them from having to buy that item that they might only use once a month, once a year, once every two years. It's just like you said. I think within a modern community or suburb, you probably have every single piece of camping gear, sports equipment, tools, decor, everything you could think of is within that community. So how do we make the most out of what's already within the community? So I actually have used blended. um I have some canning equipment that we actually purchased secondhand in our neighborhood here where an older gentleman had passed on and he had all this canning equipment and to do tomatoes every year, which is we have lots of Italian families in our neighborhood. It's a big tradition, the garage sauce, all of it. And so we were able to purchase that secondhand. But like you just said, aside from those two weekends a year that we do the canning, it just sits in the basement. And so I did get to list it and I actually lent it out to someone on my son's soccer team. they were so excited and we went over and we showed them how to use it and the whole thing. And so it also spurred us to like hang out and not just sit on the sidelines at like a thing that our kid does. Now, like we made pizza with the sauce that we made and all of that. So it's hard to make friends. so when you can make these connections that can be really beneficial in so many ways. uh So let's shift from the problem to the solution and talk about what using your platform looks like in practice. So if I'm new to all of this, what does the process look like? So we've tried to make it a very intuitive platform. ah Essentially, you're going to go, you can download the app or you can do it through desktop. So we're both on Android and iOS. ah You would make an account, provide basic information you provide for any other account. And then what it's going to do is bring you to your homepage. You're going to have a borrower side and a lender side. If you're interested in renting people in your community, you can filter by category, distance, price, all kind of those classic filters that you see in different sales platforms. And then on the lender side, you can add items. When you're adding items, we ask you to put in your daily price, weekly price, and monthly price. You put in the availability when you would want people to pick it up. or drop and drop it off, as well as the instructions to use the item and the condition you want it returned in. So as an example, we have a wood chipper. We have the instructions on how to use it. And then as well, we have the return requirements that those return requirements are that people empty the bag of the wood chips as well as wipe the item down. We have that in there just to ensure there's a standard set between the lender and the borrower to ensure that everyone is working off the same page and there's no confusion with how that item should be returned. Now, as well as part of that, we do offer coverage for items. So, we offer security on that, that if somebody would steal the item, they have to input their credit card in order to rent it from you, which gives us the power to make sure we can hold individuals accountable for any damages or stolen items, which I know is generally the largest concern of most people when they're first looking at the platform. Okay, I was going to ask about that because what do I do if somebody breaks my machine? But that's really, that's something that would incentivize me to be like, okay. So it's, it's very, very low risk. Exactly. Because an example is you can go into Gigi or Facebook marketplace right now and individuals do have items for rent on those platforms. But there's a large trust element with that that ah the borrower is verified, the lender is verified, that you know who's actually showing up. And on top of that, all those transactions are generally cash based. So you put a cash deposit. and you hope that the individual uh brings that item back in good condition. And so what we want to do is just make a more trusted and secure platform to facilitate those rentals. So it really takes kind of all that headache and that worry out of it because it's no different than using Airbnb or Uber, for instance. Honestly, it would never occur to me to rent a woodchipper. Like I'd go to Home Depot or whatever, but that just wouldn't occur to me. I would just hire a service to come and do it. But it's definitely something that we would be capable of doing ourselves if we had the machinery that we only have to use for half a day. I don't know how woodchipping works, but I just assume that's the case. What kinds of things are people most often borrowing or renting out on the platform? So we actually see a lot of decor, like party supplies, uh party decor, things of that nature is very popular. And then would say secondary to that would be tools, for sure. Yeah, we're in the process of finishing our basement right now. And my husband's trying to do it all himself, which bless he's teaching himself how to do all of it. But this is what he has been doing is looking for where can I rent a tool that I only need to use for a week. And I'm like, I know a guy. So I sent him to lend it to check it out. And I couldn't tell you the name of the tool. was something for cutting cement, but it worked out great. So now the bathroom's roughed in and we didn't have to buy a tool. hire service, any of these kinds of things. So it also helped build resilience in yourself where you get to try out these skills and see if you can teach yourself how to do something, is really cool. The decor is also something I wouldn't have thought of, even though I'm always trying to tell folks, you don't have to buy disposable plates for a party. You can just rent them. Exactly. That's something that we tell people to uh buy or correction, try before you buy. Right? If you're looking at a couple of different tools or maybe you're looking at a couple of different items and you don't know if you're going to be into it, for instance, maybe you want to get into cycling. Well, you can go out and buy that really expensive bike and then realize that you hate cycling or you could rent a bike off of a neighbor. Try it. You like it. That's awesome. Go buy the bicycle then. But instead of your default being to buy it, give it a try before you do so. So I think that's great example of that mentality. And that's just something that we're trying to really shift a culture in a way, which is certainly not an easy thing to do, but to really take that hard look of, do I need to buy this? And also, fiscally, does it make sense to buy this? One of the fastest growing industries in Ontario right now, from what I'm tracking, is So, it's grown, I think, something like 10 % per year, year over year. And they're expensive. know, looking at the rates, it's a couple hundred bucks a month for like a 10 by 10 foot area. So, people have so much stuff that they aren't using that they put into a storage container that they pay extra money to sit there and do nothing with. know, instead, don't buy that extra stuff. Don't waste money on a storage container. and save it by renting it for that one time or two times you need it. I'm nodding vigorously here because uh our farmland here in my suburb that surrounds us is pretty much gone at this point. um I grew up in this area and in the last 10 years it's pretty much gone. And I just drove by one that is quote being developed as we speak and it is a storage facility. Makes me crazy. So on that note, if someone has these items just sitting around their house, how do they list it and start earning? Yeah, so all you have to do is make an account to be a lender. We need to have some of your financial information to make sure that we can pay you out at the end. But we do have two options for that. We can do a direct deposit through uh banking, or we can do an interactive transfer for you as well if that's something that uh a user is more comfortable with. But once you sign up for your profile to sign up as a lender and post your first item, you're just going to have to select one of those two options, input direct request information, and then immediately you can click the Add Item button. and start populating with as many items as you want. So we have some users right now that are sitting at 110 items for one person. And we have others who only have one item posted or no items. So as many as you are willing to post is what we will host for you. It's pretty slick. Adding things to the app, especially was very easy. The app is excellent. uh you to iterating that and, you know, trial and error and fixes, finding problems, them. But we're very, very happy actually with the product that we have right now. Yeah, because I'm an elder millennial, I like to do things on my laptop usually that involve that sort of thing. And I, in this particular case, I was like, this app is good. I don't need to go get my laptop for this. So thank you. That's awesome. That's the 1970s. you also work with local rental businesses. How does that work and how does that connect individuals and businesses to make the community stronger? Yeah, so with a rental marketplace and with a rental platform, you're always going to have a bit of a chicken and the egg scenario. So you have the borrower who want to rent items, and then you have lenders that want their items rented. But you need to populate both in order to have both the inventory, but also the purchaser, let's say. Due to that, we were trying to think, you know, how do we get individuals to add more items? And that kind of dawned on us. We have all these amazing small rental businesses uh within our local areas. A lot of them either have websites, but they're not necessarily super intuitive, or you can't add items to cart, or you have to call for quotes because they don't have the functionality. So it is a bit of process to build out a website like that. And then alternatively, uh we also have businesses that run off Facebook Marketplace or through Instagram DM, who again, it's a little bit more difficult to actually process those transactions. So we thought, why not reach out to these businesses and essentially offer them an all-in-one rental platform where you can manage all of your listings, your inventory, uh have essentially a storefront page where you can post all of your items, and then share that link across your socials. So that way. Now you actually have essentially your own webpage dedicated to your store for rentals. And on top of that, we then add more visibility for them because anyone who's on the platform looking for an item will automatically see the inventory of that business as well. So really we're trying to proliferate renting across the board, trying to kind of bring in all the key players from businesses to individuals and have it all as kind of a one stop shop. I love that there are so many great little small businesses that like you said, just don't have the capacity to create a website like that or have the advertising or anything like that. But when you do start to filter within the 25 kilometer radius or whatever it is, all these little businesses pop up that you may even drive past every day and you don't notice them. So this is a great way to get familiar with what's around you. And something that I've realized rather quickly as well is, you know, there's so many websites out there today. There's so many apps. I think there's a misconception that it's like a very simple and easy and expensive process to do. ah That is not the reality. And it takes a lot of time and a lot of iterating. So if you are a small business and you're already focused on, you know, inventory management, sales, marketing, accounting, you know, you're kind of doing all of that yourself. Well, where do you find that extra capacity and funding to try and put together a more functional website or application on top of everything that you're already doing? A lot of time it's just not feasible. And that's where we thought we could potentially fill a gap and make it easier and hopefully increase the level of business that they are getting. Yeah, for sure. I someone who built my own website. It's not easy. It's not easy. It takes so much time. I don't even have to manage inventory on that. So this is such a valuable service that you are providing to those businesses to get connected with folks like me who are looking for them. This platform is so amazing for basically like not giving an opportunity to build your inventory website and have it all in one place and not have to pay someone $8,000 to do it. But what you're doing is connecting people like me who want to find those small businesses that maybe don't have the presence. Yes, so to build off your point, another piece that I've realized through this entire process is the difficulty of getting noticed on both social media and Google through marketing. So for a lot of these small businesses, going back to those. In order to get noticed on Google, you're paying for Google ads or your search end optimization is very high in order to make sure that the keywords that people are searching for ping on your websites. They click on your website, you get noticed, et cetera. That again is a whole other work stream for somebody in your business to manage. Through LendIt, if somebody's on the app, they can search and they're not going to get stuck with the nausea of rental apartments. uh rental tools at Home Depot, et cetera. Instead, they're only going to get the listings that are in their local area from individuals and businesses that are already there. So it really cuts through the gnaws of Google searching. It gets you straight to the product that you actually want to find. and not being served continuous ads for things to purchase that you don't actually need. So let's zoom out a little bit more and we'll talk about the bigger, bigger picture. So LendIt isn't just about individual renters or small businesses. It's also about strengthening our communities as a whole and thinking about how we consume. So how does this borrow lending model keep value in our communities? And why does that matter so much? Yeah, so it keeps value in the communities due to the fact that it really keeps the money in the community. So when you think about every transaction that is conducted, you are both one, keeping money in that community through saving the individual who's borrowing some money, while also giving funds to the individual who's renting that equipment out. Simultaneously to that, you have now just created a personal connection. uh through that transaction. For anyone who's familiar with Facebook Marketplace, you find out very quickly that a lot of the people that are buying stuff or you're buying from are really nice people. Some that you would have never met before. And you've realized very quickly that most people out there are actually very similar, more similar to you than they are dissimilar. And I really would love to have LendIt be a platform that facilitates those, but especially due to the fact that it would be within your own local community. hopefully foster and build those relationships up within that community so that we're both keeping the funds there and simultaneously building relationships, which hopefully has a, or will have a net positive effect over time. Yeah, you just become more connected to each other, but also to your stuff and just the click and collect that all of that is missing. And so we don't value each other. We don't, we don't value our things as much. So October is circular economy month here in Canada and this year's theme is perfect. It's a stronger community for all. How do you see LendIt fitting into that vision? it nests itself perfectly within it. Looking at some of the other initiatives happening through the Circular Innovation Council and Circular Economy Month, think LendIt, although maybe an idea that I think a lot of people have had, when we originally had this idea, you know, we thought this was such an amazing idea, but many, many people have thought about something similar before. The funny part is though, It has never truly really been implemented. And if we look at what the circular economy is, it's multifaceted, obviously, with, you can look at everything from secondhand stores to recycling materials. So there's a large umbrella of businesses and ideas that kind of fall underneath that category. But there's really nothing like LendIt that has people trading goods ah between each other. specifically, you know, products such as tools, decor, et cetera. It's almost like a gap in the market, especially from an eco perspective that I don't think anyone has truly capitalized on yet. So we're hoping that through LendIt and Circular Economy Month, we really integrate ourselves well. And we show that here's a whole other uh like line of effort, essentially, where individuals can make eco-friendly choices in the circular economy outside what they might already know. I love initiatives like this. And you mentioned this earlier that you don't necessarily have to be like sustainability minded to be into it because it can just be a little side hustle. It can just be a little, I'm just going to write my stuff out and make a couple of extra bucks, what have you. But uh this is sort of what I'm trying to do at this show is like, there are lots of ways to be eco that don't feel quote eco. It's a bit of a gateway into, yeah, we're doing circular, we're doing sharing, we're making connections in our community, and these are the things that are going to build resilience for us. Exactly, because I think we kind of alluded to it earlier, but there's people that care very deeply about the environment. There's a lot of people who don't care about the environment at all. And the reality is at the end of the day, uh no matter how much we educate individuals, it doesn't mean that it's going to change somebody's opinion. And we live in a free country, so they have their right to that opinion. But if we can make the eco option also the convenient option and the more fiscally responsible option. Now we've started to incentivize people to make that eco option, but for totally different reasons without even considering that. So now it's a way to bring people into that kind of thought process without directly saying, you know, you need to do this because this is the ecologically correct or environmentally friendly thing to do. No, just do it because it makes sense. It makes sense first, but then it has benefits to the environment as well. Yeah, there are lots of different ways for all of us to get to the same destination. Exactly. Do think we're starting to see that cultural shift away from ownership to access? I say it depends. think it's a very open-ended question in a way because I think there's so many factors that are going into it. I think your background, where you're from, your cultural background as well, a lot of these will have big factors in how much you trust other people around you and kind of what the culture is behind ownership versus renting versus lending, borrowing, et cetera. So I do think that this is something that is becoming more popular. And if you look at the stats from a business perspective, the circular economy and specifically the trading of goods in this fashion is on the rise. And I think partially that's probably through environmental efforts, but I think a large portion of it is just due to inflation oh as the cost of goods and services continue to rise. people are looking for more economically friendly options as well, which I think kind of going back to what we talking about previously has also driven some of these options. And I think that's where it's really the future and Tim's perspective of environmental sustainability is finding those options that fit with the economical space that we're in. Because we can use this as a way to help offer people an alternative in their daily lives that saves them money. And then in the future, you know, when the economy rebounds, maybe that's still on the back of their head. Hey, I actually don't need to own this. Okay, now, yeah, I have more money. I have more free time. However, I've actually seen how easy this is. I've seen the benefits and I love not having extra clutter around the house. So I think that's a All to say, kind of wrap myself around the axle here. I'm nodding and nodding because yes, there are so many different ways to do the thing, whether we're doing the same thing or not. So again, we're just both like, you know? But yeah, there's so many ways into the work, regardless of what your motivation is. And I think that in this moment, while we're getting comfortable with borrowing and renting and sharing and knocking on the neighbor's front door, These are connections that we are building that we are going to carry forward. Whether conditions improve or not, these are all scaffolding for making future decisions. So like this isn't just a big idea, it's also about the little choices that we make every day. So I do want to bring it a little closer to home because this should be a simple part of family life. So for families, how can borrowing make things m simpler, cheaper, whether it's the birthday parties like we just mentioned, or sports, that sort of thing. Yeah, so some good examples of that would be, again, I would go back to let's say, sporting equipment. So your kids want to try a new sport. Well, all parents know that for your kids in any sport, is expensive, but some of them are extremely expensive. So again, you can try borrowing. and renting off in your community before you actually go out purchase to make sure that your child actually enjoys that activity before fully investing in it. uh The other options are, again, hosting birthday parties or hosting anniversaries and events, uh renting decor off of your neighbors instead of going out and buying all of those place settings at IKEA or buying all of those table runners and dollar-gram that you use once and now you have been a storage bin in your basement that you never see again. um doing diy projects around your house uh kind of like you said your husband redoing the doing the bathroom well i can go out and buy a tile saw for 500 bucks and i'm only going to redo my washing once or i could rent it for a week save a bunch of money and you know return it after not have another item sitting in my basement now that i have to try and store um going on a camping trip. You want to try something new instead of going out and buying all the camping gear, uh you can go out and rent tents, cooking stoves, all of those items, which is going to again, save you a bunch of time. And you know what, you might get out there and hate camping and you don't ever want to do it again. But now you have a, you know, a five person tent and a bunch of other stuff that you have no use for that you're probably going to end up trying to sell on Facebook marketplace or recuperate maybe half the cost of what you initially spent on it. So I think the use cases are honestly endless. uh It's really up to the user's imagination. Do you have any real life stories of people using LendIt in a way that made a big difference for them? a very personal example of something that just worked out so smoothly for us was we had some good friends over for dinner. They were coming from out of town and they had their one-year-old daughter. And so we wanted to make sure there's a high chair for her so that she could obviously sit there and have dinner with us and eat. But the option was to go out and buy a $150 high chair. Well, instead we found our neighbor down the street was renting out a high chair for five bucks a day. So on Lend-It, We did the transaction, walked down to the neighbor's house, grabbed the high chair, had it set up for dinner, good to go after it brought it back. It was the perfect use case. I think really just a great example of exactly what the platform is for, is those sort of situations. We had a user this past weekend hosting a birthday party for their daughter. They went on LendIt, found a local rental business, and through that they got the classic. balloon arch, had the easel, and a bunch of other decor items, which they would have either had to go through a party supply business or purchase off Amazon. So again, just saving time, saving money and increasing convenience. especially when pickup is local. That's the best one day shipping you can get. Awesome. So I like to close every episode with a segment that I call one small shift. So I'm to put you on the spot for a little bit. I ask every guest to share one small doable change that listeners can try in their own lives today. So it doesn't have to be anything big, just one step that feels accessible and meaningful. So what would you suggest for folks who want to move from buying to borrowing? Yeah, maybe a bit of a shameless plug here, but I would say, again, before you buy, uh consider why you're buying. Do you need it for longer than that one instance? How often are you going to use it? And is the cost worth it? uh We can all reduce uh the overconsumption that is very prevalent in our society if we make uh some slightly more intentional choices. And so I encourage uh individuals to check out LendIt. Sign up as a borrower, sign up as a lender. Look, see if those items are in your area. And one thing that I would highlight is if there is an item that you're looking for that is not in your area or un-lended, you can put an inquiry into us. And then what we'll do is we'll receive that and then we can go back out to our user base in that area and say, hey, does anybody have this item? Because maybe they just haven't thought of posting it. And then we'll try and source those for you as well. That's so cool. I didn't know it had that feature. So I'm to put the link to sign up for LendIt and the show notes as well for everybody. So Tim, thank you so much for your time today. This has been awesome. I love LendIt. I love all of this. I'm so into anything that brings community members together. So thank you so much for all of your work on this and everything you're doing to strengthen communities across Canada. No, thank you, Sarah. really appreciate it. And thank you for having me on the podcast. It's something that I think you and I very much align with and I love your messaging of, you know, what are those simple things that you can do every day that make a difference? don't necessarily always need to go to the extreme, but intentional choices every day is something that you can do and kind of hardwire into your psyche. And hopefully in the future, throughout enough of us doing this make a bigger positive impact. Yeah. So for folks who want to learn more, where can they find you? So you can find us on Instagram and Facebook at lendit.ca. As well, we have our website, which is www.lend-it.ca. And then we're also gonna be at a couple in-person events coming up. So the Ottawa Wedding Show is running one to two November. So we're gonna have a booth there if any of your listeners are in the Ottawa area and wanna stop by. And then we're also going to be at the Peterborough Reconnect event on 29 October. So if anybody's in the area or any of your listeners, feel free to drop by and come meet us. Definitely stop by Tim's cool guy. Thank you so much, Tim. I really appreciate your time today. Yeah, take care. So thank you so much for tuning in today. Everything that we talked about today is going to be linked for you down in the show notes. And you can also head to the blog at sustainable in the suburbs.com, sign up for the newsletter where I share practical tips and resources to help you save money, reduce waste and make sustainable living feel a little easier. And before we wrap up, here's a little reminder. The next time you need something, whether it's a ladder or party decor or camping gear, pause before hitting buy now. See if you can borrow it from a friend. or neighbor or rent it from someone in your community. Trying before buying is that one small shift that adds up to a stronger community for all. As always, thank you so much for listening and being a part of this little eco community. Remember, start where you are, use what you have and live a little greener. Thanks for tuning in to Sustainable in the Suburbs. Every small step adds up and I'm so glad we're doing this together. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to follow the show, share it with a friend and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. You can find me at sustainableinthesuburbs.com or at Sarah Robertson Barnes on all the things. Until next time, start where you are, use what you have and live a little greener.