Why Buy Anything You Could Borrow (Especially If You’re Renting)?

Users browse the items on a website, make a selection, pay an hourly or daily rate and activate a mechanism to open the door of the locker and retrieve the object. The system reminds the user when it is time to return the object and notifies Brevvie and the landlord if anything goes missing. Users are charged for damage or loss, just as they would be if they were renting a car.

Kristine Everly, Brevvie’s co-founder, has a background in real estate marketing. Seeing the footprint of new apartments “getting smaller and smaller,” she said, she resolved to combine the ecological good of reduced consumption with the practical benefits of fewer belongings to store.

“A ladder, a dolly, a vacuum cleaner, a carpet steamer: No one wants to spend money on that stuff,” she said. “They want to buy a new iPhone.”

Ms. Everly, 43, said she combats any stigma associated with shared goods by filling the lockers with high-quality merchandise that apartment residents may be reluctant to buy but are delighted to use. Her vacuum cleaners are Dysons that sell for $500 but rent for an average of about $8 a day. (They also can be rented by the hour.) Her coolers from Yeti start at $200 to buy, but can be borrowed for $12 to $14 a day.

Even so, there are haters, especially among people her parents’ age, Ms. Everly said. To those who say it’s gross to rent something someone else has worn or held, she replies, “Well, you just ate in a restaurant, and you used a fork that someone else had in their mouth.’”

Brevvie sells the stocked units to landlords for $13,000 to $16,000 each and provides round-the-clock customer service and oversight for a monthly fee of $199 a locker, paid out of the rental revenues the building collects. (Landlords keep the rest.) To date, 32 lockers have been installed, including 16 at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Wash. This number will grow to 38 in July.