A LENDING LIBRARY FOR TOOLS
- ellencdonker
- 22 hours ago
- 7 min read
SOMA Tool Share promotes a sharing economy mindset
By Ellen Donker
L to R: Volunteers organize tools in the storage facility; SOMA Tool Share board members Janet Villano, Dave Helmkamp and Kenny Grossman; more tools!
When you become a homeowner it seems like you inherit an endless list of repairs or improvements. Some projects, such as kitchen or bathroom renovations, are best handled by the professionals. But what about items such as adding shelving, cleaning your dryer vents, installing a new bathroom floor or building a trellis for your climbing roses? They often require tools that you may not have.
Rather than roam the aisles of Home Depot to buy a tool you may use once, now you can borrow them from a new tool library called SOMA Tool Share. Currently housed in Extra Space Storage at 311 Valley Street in South Orange, the group lets members reserve tools on its website and pick them up on a Tuesday evening or Saturday afternoon in the community room on the bottom floor of the building. Genius!
That’s what Sara Lewis-Atishev thought when she decided to tackle a few cleaning projects. She needed a steam cleaner for a rust spot on her rug and a dry brush to clean her child’s car seat that had suffered a yogurt explosion. “Of course, we have some of the basics, but stuff like a steam cleaner – I don’t need to go and buy that.” Christine Yoon had the same thought when it came to needing an oscillating tool to cut off some rotting wood near her front door. For both women, SOMA Tool Share provided the tools they needed. They had the extra honor of being the organization’s inaugural clients on May 16.
SOMA Tool Share is the brainchild of local residents Janet Villano and Dave Helmkamp. Villano started thinking about starting a tool library after a neighbor borrowed her tools for a renovation project. “I just have a lot of tools … a tile saw, for example, that I use once every four years. It just sits there the rest of the time, very wasteful,” she says. “I did a little research, and I found there’s a world of tool libraries out there.”
Although the concept may sound modern, the first tool library is said to have started in 1943 in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. By the 1970s, most tool libraries had closed down, due in part to the availability of cheap products and the rise of consumer culture, where a person’s possessions are equated with their social status. During the financial crisis of 2008-2009, interest in tool libraries began to accelerate as people realized it made more sense to borrow tools rather than buy. With the development of cloud-based software, tool libraries now had an easier way to log inventory and take reservations.
For Villano, her interest in tools began during childhood as she watched her handy father tackle projects. Her work life also supported tool literacy. “I spent most of my career as an industrial designer,” she says. “When I went to grad school, you had to make your own models. Everybody just 3D prints everything now, but we had to get tools and make models and sand them and build them up. I learned how to use a lot of things.”
Over the years, Villano has dived into various home renovation projects. “I like to do a lot of things myself,” she says, “like finishing work, cabinets, that kind of thing.”
Seeking input on how to start a tool library, Villano joined a Google group focused on the subject. “There’s an international alliance, and there’s a national alliance. It’s a really amazing forum where people who run tool libraries talk about the issues that they have,” she says. “A lot of the issues that came up as concerns for people who are not familiar weren’t actually big issues for the people who run them day to day.” That eased her mind about tool theft and injury and reinforced the notion that a tool library becomes a community for people who simply want to take good care of their homes and property.
Villano notes that some tool libraries are part of public libraries, while others are standalone or attached to existing nonprofits such as Habitat for Humanity.
As Villano ruminated on her idea, she connected with Dave Helmkamp. An engineer who maintains a number of residential properties, he had also been thinking about a tool library. In fact, he had spent the last six months searching for commercial space to house tools and serve as a co-working space for members to build projects. “When Janet and I met,” Dave says, “she agreed to go down my path until we had assessed all the properties that might be suitable. In exchange, if that didn’t play out, I agreed to help her start just a tool share.”
After they exhausted their commercial space options, Villano researched the steps needed to start a tool library. She and Helmkamp also held meetings in Maplewood and South Orange to determine community interest.
“We got about a dozen people in each meeting, which was great,” says Villano, “and that’s how we found our third board member, Kenny [Grossman], who is an architect and lives in South Orange.” The bonus was that his wife, Cindy Grossman, is an attorney who later helped them form a 501c3 nonprofit.
For Kenny Grossman, who has gotten his hands dirty with general contracting and many house maintenance projects, the community aspect of the nonprofit was his primary interest. “Just like everybody else, I have an old house in town and everything needs to be fixed all the time. I love doing those things. But it’s a lot and sometimes it needs more than one set of hands. So, something that had been of interest to me was creating some sort of community board, some way for people with similar interests to get in touch.”
In 2025, the trio started meeting monthly to talk through their plans and next steps. They also held a very successful tool drive in Maplewood and now have about 1,300 tools in inventory. Villano housed the tools in her basement for nine months until this past January when they moved them to Extra Space Storage, above the Founders Park Community Center on Valley Street in South Orange.
“We have more screwdrivers than you’ll ever need,” Villano says with a laugh. “No one should ever, ever buy a screwdriver. There’s so many in the world. Hammers also.”
For four months, Villano and volunteers organized the tools. She says, “Everyone helped, taking pictures, writing down the tool, the make, the model, whatever [was] needed to explain the tool and putting it into a software system.” Now residents can sign up to borrow via the website. A one-time payment of $30 gives you a month of borrowing privileges. An annual membership of $100 provides a year of access to tools. SOMA Tool Share also takes donations.
The board held fundraisers to cover expenses. The group was also fortunate to be awarded a seed grant of $5,000 this year from the Maplewood Foundation.
Although Lewis-Atishev says she first learned about SOMA Tool Share from a Facebook post, she was already familiar with the concept. “We had just moved from Chicago,” she says. “Chicago has a huge tool library that we used a lot.” She didn’t need convincing to commit to a $100 annual membership. “I’m just really excited to have this in the community and to have a space to go to. I just signed up to volunteer this upcoming Saturday.”
Yoon learned about tool libraries from an article in The New York Times. “I like cutting down on consumerism and just reusing and sharing as much as possible,” she says. “I don’t know that I would have tackled the projects without borrowing the tools. I would have just started with who do I need to hire to fix what I need to get fixed.” Because SOMA Tool Share is a nonprofit organization and she doesn’t often have the need to rent tools, she chose to support their mission with a recurring monthly donation.
Helmkamp recalls a recent borrower who needed the enormous wood clamps he had spotted in their inventory. “The reason he came was that they were top-of-the-line clamps and they were going to cost him nearly 350 bucks.”
Of course, it’s great to be able to borrow tools to tackle your home projects but not if you don’t know how to use them. That’s where the group’s learning series comes in. To date, they’ve held A “Homeowning 101” class led by Paul Lewis of 2GFN and pickersnj.com; a “Fix a Flat” bike workshop by SOMA Bike Bus volunteers; a “Plumbing 101” seminar given by Johnny Cataneo of Toro to the Rescue; and a “Yard, Lawn & Garden Basics” workshop led by local expert Neil Chambers of Chambers Design.
To see what’s next, follow them on Facebook and Instagram or visit somatoolshare.org.
The SOMA Tool Share board is searching for a permanent space to call home to stock the tools, lend them out, hold seminars and host workshops. They also need local experts to lead classes. Their hope is to create a community that encourages DIY confidence while also promoting sustainability and creating opportunities for volunteerism and skill-sharing.
“We’re a simple organization,” Grossman says. “It’s a simple idea. But if executed well, I think it’s a benefit to the entire community.”
Ellen Donker tries to tackle easy home-improvement projects but has learned that everything takes longer than YouTube videos lead you to believe.
Comments