Tool Library - Sustainable Capitol Hill

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The Capitol Hill Tool Library (a project of Sustainable Capitol Hill) is a network of neighbors, businesses and community groups dedicated to making Capitol Hill a sustainable community. Come join us for sustainable community projects, classes, and community events, learning to DIY and have fun doing it! Partnered with First Covenant Church, the library is located at 1552 Crawford Place between Pike and Pine, near Summit and Bellevue. Stop by and check it out!

bike_repair Imagine borrowing a food dehydrator, a ladder, a fishing rod, much like you would borrow a book from SPL. Imagine learning how to fix your broken toaster, building a worm bin, preserving your summer bounty. Enjoy a local community of knowledgeable fixers, tool lending, and workshops at the new Capitol Hill Tool Library.

In addition to loaning out tools, we have a great shop space that you can use to work on your projects. We also have a number of events to share skills and work on projects together.

We are accepting donations now, however we are very selective about what we can accept. We can’t accept liquid material or gas powered tools. We also already have plenty of the most common tools and don’t have the shelf space to hold more. Additionally we can’t accept scrap material, leftover nails and screws, or machine parts. Feel free to check with us to see if your donation would be a good fit for us. All donations are tax deductible because we are a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit (Tax ID 47-3931713) . To sharing and fixing!

If you’d like to join our community of tool librarians, please email the leads listed on the Volunteer page. We still have a lot of work to do, and donations of time as well as money are a key ingredient to bringing this all together. If you’d like to join our community, let us know! Please drop us a line at toollibrary@sustainablecapitolhill.org and let us know you’d like to help! Alternatively, you can just stop by the library or show up to our next steering committee meeting or event.

Tool Library Mission

The goals of the Capitol Hill Tool Library are:

Build community by bringing the members of the neighborhood together to share tools, time and skills,
Develop neighborhood resiliency by making tools available for general use as well as teaching the community how to make and repair things,
Reduce unnecessary consumerism and waste by sharing resources as a community rather than buying them separately as individuals.

A tool library is similar to a book library: it is a collection of tools that members can check out, use for a while, and then return. We use the term “tools” very broadly to include any items that someone might use on an irregular basis such as the usual woodworking and gardening tools, but also tools for cooking, food preservation, sewing, and even special events. Our vision for the tool library is larger than simply making tools available to borrow, however. We intend to host workshops to help people learn various skills from using the tools in the library, to fixing broken items, to other self-sufficiency classes such as food growing and preservation. Some of the workshops may also be focused on completing tangible sustainability projects such as: parks restoration, building worm bins or solar cookers together, etc. We hope to use the tool library to collaborate with other groups in the neighborhood and to serve as a resource to further their work. For instance, the tool library could partner with neighborhood fruit gleaning projects, neighborhood cleanups, or native plant restoration projects by providing the necessary tools as well as advertising these events to our members. The Capitol Hill Tool Library aims to build a stronger community, empower people and the neighborhood to be more resilient, and reduce waste associated with individual consumption. We hope you’ll join us!