How about lending your car to a complete stranger, or allowing someone you’ve never met before crash on your sofa while you sleep a few feet away?

If you’re an only child you probably just passed out at the thought but those of us who grew up with older brothers or sisters will be less shockable when it comes to joining the so-called ‘sharing economy’.

It’s not new - it’s been around since the global meltdown of 2008, fuelled by a desire to save and/or make extra cash but now it’s really taking off.

The biggest players are Airbnb, which has more than 700 places in Oxford listed on its website and Roomerama, who let people rent out their spare rooms.

Rather than someone who lets an empty property, the owner lives there and treats it as though there’s a pal coming to stay for a night or two.

When it comes to car-sharing schemes, they tend to split into two types.

Either it’s about paying to borrow someone else’s car (peer-to-peer car rental) with firms like Buzzcar, Getaround, RelayRides and Tamyca, or it’s a taxi-style set-up such as Lyft, Sidecar and Uber, where car owners drive passengers around for a fee.

Either way, it’s a money spinner for those sharing their homes or cars and a saving for those borrowing them, since rates are far cheaper than commercial ones.

Being online, it’s easy to use the ratings feature to slag-off a dodgy experience, or praise a good one, so others can work out which to avoid.

And in many cases, there’s a virtual connection, in that you’re handing the keys to a friend-of-a-friend on Facebook.

But what bothers me about it is human nature.

When I drive my other half’s car, I can feel him glowering every time I stall, crunch the gears or park less than perfectly. Sometimes, it’s obvious he’s itching to snatch back the steering wheel.

And having people to stay can be annoying, even when you know and like them.

So, forgive me if I’m a bit sceptical about how well this works when you don’t even know the person leaving their hairs all over your bath and trashing your kitchen.

With mates, even if their toddler wets the bed and ruins the mattress, or drops something heavy on the basin and leaves a massive crack (still bitter, me?), they make you laugh and you love them, so who cares?

I just don’t know how this would work when it’s a stranger.

And there’s a problem from the flip side of the coin, too.

I’m one of the clumsiest people I know, so how would I feel if I stayed in a stranger’s spare room and broke their TV, or borrowed their car and ran into the back of someone?

But most of all, I’m worried about all the only children out there.

They didn’t have an older sibling to snatch, grab and wrestle things away in the Lord-of-the Flies-style crash course on sharing that is childhood.

They’ll be hopeless when they have to hand over the keys of their precious Toyota Yaris, or surrender up the contents of the neatly stacked fridge to a stranger. Not a chance...

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