The curtains had been sitting in their packaging for six months. Shelby Church wanted them up, but hanging them meant reaching the ceiling, and reaching the ceiling meant a ladder, and owning a ladder in a small apartment meant finding somewhere to put it for the other 364 days it would collect dust. That particular bind, somewhere between practical and absurd, turns out to be exactly the problem a growing number of Americans are running into. And a quietly expanding network of tool lending libraries across the country has started solving it in a way that costs almost nothing.
The Maker’s Hub tool library: https://themakershub.org/
La county tool libraries: https://lacountylibrary.org/tools/
Seattle – King County Tool Library
Chicago Tool Library
More than tools on a shelf
Los Angeles, California – LA County opened its own tool lending libraries in 2022, and the range of what they carry goes well beyond a socket set. The most checked-out item is a pressure washer that retails for around $240. On top of that, locations in Seattle and Chicago carry party supplies, a bingo set, a bubble machine, a projector, moving blankets, furniture sliders, and a carpet cleaner. Since Church started reporting on this, the LA County libraries have added podcasting microphones, an $800 camera, a tripod, and a GoPro to their lending inventory.
But the county locations have a real limitation: thin inventory and not many branches. That gap led Church to a newer operation called the Makaker Hub, run by a woman named Adrian who spent her career in law enforcement before opening the space as a nonprofit. The idea came from watching people inside correctional facilities become genuinely skilled at woodworking, welding, and sign-making, then leave and never pursue any of it again. When she asked why, the answer was always the same: the tools were out of reach financially. The Makaker Hub now stocks over a thousand items, with donated hardware filling a free sharing wall, pressure washers lined up near the entrance, an entire aisle of nailers and bradders, chainsaws on poles, and a section of free fabric the hub is trying to divert from the landfill. Anyone can join for a low monthly membership to cover overhead.
Church rented a ladder for $35 for the full week. The same rental from a hardware chain would have run $43 per day, meaning two days would have cost $86. A full annual membership at the Makaker Hub comes to $85 and covers unlimited rentals across ten tools at a time.
The repair clinic that gets the same feeling as a fishing hole
After returning the ladder, Church brought in a lamp her dogs had knocked over, one she would otherwise have thrown away. Inside the Makaker Hub’s free repair clinic, a volunteer named John fixed it. He has been coming for about a year and a half, and he described the moment that made it stick: a girl brought in her father’s camera, and when he got it working and she took a picture, the reaction stopped him cold. ‘It was like catching a fish,’ he said. ‘I rather come here than watch TV.’ That afternoon, the repair table held an air fryer, items being sewn back together, and a vacuum cleaner.
Church also built a website mapping all of LA’s tool libraries in one place, showing live inventory and letting users save favorites, which took her roughly twenty minutes to put together.
A tile saw sitting in a corner somewhere
A few years ago, Church bought a tile saw for a bathroom renovation. She has not used it since. It is sitting in storage, waiting, as she put it, to eventually break and end up in a landfill. Tool libraries do not solve every version of that problem, but they do give people a route around it before the purchase happens in the first place.
The curtains are up now, and the room has a softness it did not have before. The ladder went back.
John’s toolbox, the $3,000 worth of personal equipment he brings in each week and uses entirely for other people’s broken things, was sitting open on the repair table when Church left.
