Welcome to Shareville

Boats, bikes, clothing, seeds—even chickens! They’re all part of the exploding world of borrowing instead of buying.

AArt Carmichael loves living like a local—no matter where he’s traveling. The writerproducer, 50, from Knoxville, Tenn., has stayed in Airbnb rentals in 20 cities in five countries. “You end up in an actual neighborhood instead of a tourist gulch where most hotels are located.” A standout of his Airbnb adventures was a stay in a yoga studio in Nice, France, where he shared the owners’ friendly Doberman pinscher, Hugo. “I had a hiking and walking buddy for the whole trip.”

The success of Airbnb, the granddaddy of peer-to-peer sharing with more than 160 million people staying in more than 3 million properties in 191 countries, has helped inspire a whole range of sharing. Today, with just a credit card and a smartphone, you can share bracelets, wedding dresses, RVs, sailboats, camping sites and even dinner at a stranger’s house. Here’s a look at some of what’s out there. Clothing & Accessories

You know the drill. You buy that on-trend, floral-print maxi dress, wear it twice and then push it to the back of your closet. Le Tote has a solution for the high cost of looking chic: clothing for rent. The fashion-sharing business lets customers borrow up to five pieces of clothing and accessories at a time. Customers wear them and return them. Le Tote will even wash them for you. Last year the company shipped 3 million pieces of apparel and accessories.

Karin Faulk, a nursing assistant from Pine Grove, Calif., is on the $59-permonth plan and gets three items of clothing and two accessories a week. She loves getting her weekly Tote. “It’s exciting. You always get that feeling that you’re shopping when you’re really not.” Faulk, 40, says 70 percent of her wardrobe comes from Le Tote. “I did the math. I wore $5,000 worth of clothing in four months. I paid $250 to use it.”

Your Own Ride

Own the trip, not the car. That’s the motto of Zipcar, a car-sharing service that lends cars by the hour or day. Zipcar has 12,000 cars in 500 cities around the globe and more than a million members. A Zipcar starts at $8 to $10 an hour, and that includes gas and insurance.

Zipcar’s biggest fans are urban dwellers like David Amy, a 25-year-old software salesman from Toronto. He lives a nearly car-free lifestyle, but when he does need wheels, he gets a Zipcar. “I save at least $600 a month by borrowing a car instead of owning one.”

Bikes & Boards

Many major U.S. cities have a bike-sharing program where

cyclists can rent a bike by the hour and return it to any docking station around town.

Spinlister does it a little differently. The world’s biggest peer-to-peer bike-sharing platform connects people to bikes in more than 100 countries. They also rent snowboards, skis and paddleboards.

Boats

With Boatbound, a service that connects renters with boat owners, you can pick from more than 16,000 boats in over 2,100 cities, ranging from a sailboat in Honolulu to a cabin cruiser in Boston. Be your own captain, or the owner of the boat can be your guide. You rent by the day and prices range from $100 for a small skiff to $7,000 or more for a yacht.

A third of renters are ages 25 to 34, like Craig Kaufmann, a 30-year-old audio engineer from Philadelphia, who has rented a dozen boats, including a Sea Ray bowrider in Elkton, Md., a NauticStar center console in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and a Sea Ray cabin cruiser in Alexandria Bay, N.Y. “It’s nice not to have to deal with anything concerning a boat except enjoying it,” he says.

Community Meals

Break bread and meet new people with Feastly, a mealsharing service where you dine with a chef at his or her home or at a pop-up restaurant. It’s Airbnb for dinner. You can sign up for a Peruvian meal in San Francisco, Indonesian street food in Portland or a Vegan Delight dinner in Manhattan.

Afia Anabasua Opal of Playa del Rey, Calif., has hosted five Feastly meals in three months. The 30-year-old native of Ghana serves six- to nine-course meals of African cuisine. She charges around $50 a person. “I love doing this,” she says. “My guests have the opportunity to sit down and have conversations with new people. By the end of the meal, most of them are no longer strangers.” Dominique Freire, 51, of Falls Church, Va., has attended three Feastly meals. The food was delicious, but the social aspect was even better. “Meeting people outside of your range is often how you have the best conversations,” she says.

Chickens

For the last five years, author Lia Huber’s family has shared a small flock of backyard chickens with their Healdsburg, Calif., neighbors. “Basically, they have the space, and we both have the desire,” says Huber, 46. The families hatched up their plan the old-fashioned way—over their back fence. They built a coop and a run and collect eggs on alternate days. “We share expenses, eggs, caring, fawning over our babies— and burying them together when that happens too.” THE BENEFITS OF BORROWING Sharing an ethnic meal (top) with folks you don’t know or chickens with a neighbor (below) builds community. Borrowing a boat, bike or car lets you focus on the experience without worrying about the hassles of ownership. And growing a garden from seeds you check out from the library (bottom) is earth- and budget-friendly—and just plain cool, especially if you share your own seeds the next year.

RVs

Hit the road in someone else’s camper using RVShare. You can pick from more than 10,000 vehicles in all 50 states, from a vintage Vanagon Westfalia that rents for $115 a night to a superluxe Entegra Anthem that will cost you $6,000 a night.

Vinnie Carbone, who owns a whiskey distillery in Canal Fulton, Ohio, needed an RV to take his family to a festival. “We only need an RV once a year, so I can’t justify the cost of buying one,” says the 36-year-old. “Renting it is really practical in our case.”

Ukuleles & Seeds

Libraries have been sharing items for decades, no app needed. The Nashville Public

Library also lends some unusual items to anyone with a library card, including ukuleles and seeds. Since May there have been 15 ukes available for rent, and all of them were checked out the first day.

The library also has a seedsharing program. Patrons can check out seeds for vegetables, flowers and herbs. They’re asked to save seeds from their crop and return them to the library for future patrons to use. The program began in 2014. Last year, more than 1,300 patrons borrowed around 8,500 packs of seeds.