sam firke dot com

Rare blog, rattlin’ blog

Tag: meutch

  • Meutch Update: September 2026
    ,

    Meutch Update: September 2026

    Ope, summer got busy and I didn’t post an August Meutch update. I made some good updates in July, then got pulled away by vacation (good) and illness (bad). Now school is back in session and work on Meutch is steaming along!

    Work on the application: Meutch gained many new features since my last post. The CHANGELOG has the details but here are some highlights from July:

    1. The messages inbox looks nice and you can archive messages and mark them read
    2. There’s now a “Contact Us” form so that users can report ideas or bugs to the admins without needing a GitHub account
    3. Claimed giveaways are hidden from the feed by default
    4. There’s no more “I want this” button, simplifying the process of assigning a giveaway to anyone who messaged

    Plus some bug fixes and backend work. I’ve done a lot in September, but that’s for the October update.

    Usage: activity on the app got a little quieter, dropping to 41 active users in July, then rebounding to 48 in August. I am still donating a dollar for each active user in each month, this time that went to Fed Up Ministries and the Mutual Aid Network of Ypsilanti (MANY). Go list an item or post or answer a request to keep these donations growing!

    Between long weekends, vacations, and spending time outside, I’ve had less time for working on the site and for using it. I’m hopeful that’s the case for other people too and that usage will pick back up now that fall is underway. Let’s share Halloween costume accessories! I just posted a request for some Thor accessories for my 6th grader.

    I continue to personally benefit from using Meutch. One highlight: In August borrowed tubes from two different people who responded to my Meutch request and took my boys tubing on the Argo Cascades. I lived here when the Cascades opened in 2012, how had I never been?! It’s definitely a top-things-to-do-in-Ann-Arbor attraction.

    Three kids in two inner tubes, floating on a river near a train bridge at sunset
    Our second trip was near sunset, it was much less crowded!

    These two loans were not tracked on Meutch (I’ve since added an “I have this item” button in replies to requests to make it easier to get these items into the site). This illustrates how the Meutch activity numbers I see are under-counts. The public canoe livery charges $14 for a 2-hour tube rental; the Meutch loans saved me $84 that weekend.

    Outreach: At this point the site itself is thoroughly ready for use. It needs one thing: more users. To that end I’m looking at more ways to make people aware of it:

    • I had a MEUTCH summer game code on my bike
    • I will be tabling at the Ann Arbor Zero Waste Festival on September 27th, 12-3pm at Kiwanis. It’s the only time all year you can shop Kiwanis resale on a Sunday! Come say hi.

    The Meutch Outreach Committee made these sweet flyers to hand out at events:

    I’ll carry a few with me for impromptu conversations, I’m bad at plugging my own stuff in person but want to get better.

    Onward!

    No comments on Meutch Update: September 2026
  • ,

    Meutch Update: July 2026

    Meutch had a great June, with more people using the platform than ever. More activity is making Meutch more fun for me to use! Here are a few of my personal highlights from last month.

    Borrowing: I have this electric leaf shredder. Its blade broke 3 years ago and it’s been useless. I ordered a replacement set but when I went to finally perform the fix, I couldn’t loosen the bolt securing the blades. I contacted support and they told me I just needed to use more force – but I couldn’t get enough torque with my ratcheting socket wrench. So I posted a Meutch request to borrow a breaker bar. My friend Jonathan dropped his off on his way to church and I had the bolt loose in seconds. The rest of my repair was easy and I promptly shredded some leaves to use as mulch in my raised beds!

    Lending: I gave away some seeds for a little free library and a spirograph toy. A couple of moms in my neighborhood showed up to pick them up, with kids in tow; I was sitting on my front porch and got to hear about their projects. It was delightful how Meutch led to chats with neighbors I’d never met before.

    My seeds are in the seed box below!

    Our family also lent out our backpacking packs. They went to Nordhouse Dunes for Juneteenth weekend, came home, and are now heading to Canada!

    By the numbers: it was our biggest month yet, with 56 users taking an action on the site. That means I have made a charitable donation of $56, this month to All Hands Active, the hackerspace/makerspace community in downtown Ann Arbor.

    Features: Meutch gained new features in June including regional circles. These are designated by a site administrator (me, for now) and if a new user registers and their location is inside that circles radius, it is recommended to them as the main circle to join. I made a regional Ypsilanti circle, in addition to designating a regional Ann Arbor circle.

    One nice feature came from a new contributor: thanks to @terhorst, one’s own activities now show in the home feed by default, though you can filter them out. He is also almost done with a feature to let users reply to messages directly via email.

    Lastly, I added official terms and conditions and a privacy policy. So far everyone on the site has behaved themselves well but that won’t last forever if the service keeps growing. This starts to get ahead of that by explicitly stating expectations for conduct.

    Room for improvement: there are two major related features I want to work on soon. I want to give users the ability to reply to a request by offering an item – multiple people have requested this. And I’d like users to be able to control which circles an item of theirs is visible to.

    These would go hand in hand; you could mark an item visible to no circles at all, if you wanted, but use the share link to give only the requester access. That would allow people to lend valuable items that they might not feel comfortable making available to everyone on Meutch.

    Thanks to everyone who has used Meutch, keep spreading the word! It feels like we’re nearing a self-sustaining level of activity.

    No comments on Meutch Update: July 2026
  • , ,

    Meutch Update: June 2026

    I launched Meutch in May! Thanks to friends who told me to stop fiddling with it and get it out into the world.

    We ended the month with over a hundred people on Meutch. And 35 people joined a circle and took an action, which means I donated $35 dollars to a local sharing-oriented organization. This month it’s MakerWorks, where people share space, tools, and skills. As a reminder, I will donate to charity for every user who is active in a given month through all of 2026, so continue to borrow, loan, request, or giveaway!

    It seems like anecdotally the platform is working. My garden now is full of plants that I got in response to my Meutch request – the tomatoes came from a friend while the green onions were especially magical as I got them from someone I didn’t already know!

    Yesterday I borrowed a Sawzall via Meutch and used it to chop up some long scrap boards that were too big to fit in my garbage can. It was nice to use a high-quality tool without having to pay for it and store it – or even decide what model I wanted to buy.

    The fruits of my labor and the tool I borrowed: this stack plus a bunch more in a garbage can.

    And I heard from friends who borrowed a Pack N Play crib to host visiting family and a folding table and chairs for a party. Plus I lent a ton of camping gear to a work colleague who is trying backpacking for the first time.

    Growth areas: I heard complaints and suggestions from users directly and also learned from how people use Meutch, leading to improvements (here’s everything that changed in Meutch in May). For instance, 96 people logged into Meutch in May, but two-third of them then took no further action. I’m now nudging new users to join a circle so they see activity in their feed immediately of what’s going on near them. 

    On the technical side, I completed the foundation for a mobile app, moving things around on the backend to get ready. Meutch is not a slam dunk case for a mobile app, given that it works fine in your web browser. But I think a lot of people expect a mobile app and I want to meet people wherever they are. That said, in June I want to prioritize the core web app experience.

    Thanks to everyone who signed up and especially those of you who made a circle and told your friends about Meutch! I’m hopeful that we can sustain a foundation of activity among early adopters who are passionate about sharing and keep growing the user base.

    Here’s to sharing in June! On my summer bucket list is to go tubing on the Huron River … I plan to borrow the tubes on Meutch.

    4 comments on Meutch Update: June 2026