So there I was tweeting away and suddenly I’d fallen into building the sharing economy.
Not single handedly of course – lots of faster, taller and smarter people with letters after their name started long before me.
I was not looking for it, nor was I particularly mad about it. I joined Zip Car because I think owning a car that you drive once a week is nuts, I used Spotify and Love Film early on because the thought of buying CD’s and DVD’s and then buying furniture to keep them on was a pain in the arse.
Somewhat righteously downloading acres of free music and movies has never really sat well with me. If you can have instant unlimited access to both on all your devices by paying about a £20 a month for software that works why go through the hassle of illegally downloading it all?
When our son was born I refused to buy anything, which was a combination of being a miserable puritan deep down and a touch of being savvy – (more the first than the last). Within minutes of letting people know that `supercoolwife’ was pregnant attics in Essex were emptied of gadgets and clothes parcels were dispatched from Buenos Aries.
I had no desire to drag myself round Baby Gap or Mammas and Papas whilst trying to secure a new mortgage to pay for clothing that new son would wear for 2 months.
Where sharing really kicked in was when we developed a clothes and equipment swap with our friends. Now “son” is getting older we are going to start using Bertie and the Bean who I met through the sharingeconomy and is based round the corner from us.
The hassle of putting clothes in a bag and posting them to receive another one back is NOTHING compared with the agony of shopping.
So that’s it I am sold on the sharing economy. For me it comes down to waste, I have never liked waste, when I worked in hospitality Managing Directors of restaurants wanted to use everything to make the most most money, nothing wrong with that. However, good Head Chef’s wanted to use everything out of respect for the food, the earth and having less to carry out to the bin.
