Secret set of useful items for adult life that are good to have:
1) A hammer, not too big, maybe an 8oz one. Because you will need to hit something with a hammer at some point - maybe a nail’s coming out of the wall, maybe that bag of frozen fruit you got melted a bit on the way home and refroze into a solid lump in the freezer. At some point, you will need a hammer. I got mine at the Great Canadian Dollar Store for $1 Canadian. Good hammer, serves its purpose.
2) A pair of regular-sized screwdrivers, one phillips (has the + shaped tip) and one flathead (has the - shaped tip). As with the hammer, you will need to screw or unscrew something at some point, and these two types of screwdriver will cover most of the stuff you’ll encounter on a normal day. I got these at the dollar store, too, reliable allies.
3) A mini-screwdriver kit, a small one with maybe six screwdrivers in it. These will have your back with all the fiddly little screws you don’t normally think about - glasses, calculator battery cases, small bits on sewing machines. One of those items you generally think of as useless, right up until you need it, at which point it becomes the most valuable thing in your house. You can get a good set for about $8 usd.
4) This one will sound like a joke, but a model tool kit for plastic models, a simple one with nine to eleven pieces. They are full of strange, esoteric tools that can just… come in handy at weird times - a metal file to smooth a rough edge on something plastic or resin, a nice exact-o knife with some spare blades, a polish cloth, tweezers, good stuff. And you can get a good one for $10-$15 usd easy, which is way cheaper than going and buying all this stuff separately.
5) A box of q-tips. They’re just weirdly useful for stuff, but, again, one of those things you don’t often think of until you need one.
6) A cleaning toothbrush. This can be an old toothbrush that is a little too worn to get its job done anymore or a cheap new one. The important thing is, the cleaning toothbrush does not go in the mouth. It is used with a bit of soap or detergent to gently clean spots on clothes, dirt from the fiddly areas of jewelry, watches, cool figures/statuettes, small spaces the scrub-cloth doesn’t reach, and that sort of thing. It is a powerful secret weapon, cherish it throughout its life, then pay respects when it is finally replaced.
8) A pair of utility scissors, possibly with orange handles. The big kind your parents didn’t let you get as a kid, but not so big as to be unwieldy. Grown-up scissors. Used for everything from cutting cardboard to removing a small chunk of uneven hair to cutting plants outside. Costs about $11 usd to get a good pair, very worth it.
9) An appropriately-sized bag or box to keep all this stuff in. It won’t have to be very big, a shoe box will hold all this with loads of space left over, but you wanna keep it consolidated, you know? The scissors especially, they will try to strike out on their own for regions unknown if left to their own devices.
All together, this kit will probably end up costing from $40-50 usd, if you go for the cheapest version of everything I’ve suggested and hit up the local dollar store (like I did). That may still sound like a lot. However, with the exception of the q-tips and the toothbrush, all this is stuff you will never have to buy again. The newest, non-toothbrush-or-q-tip item I have on my list is the tool kit for plastic models, and it’s about four years old - the rest is more in the range of fifteen years old and have never needed replacing.
None of this is likely stuff you’ll need on a daily basis, but it’s all stuff that you will need eventually and which is really useful to just have on-hand when you do. One day you’ll need a screwdriver to pry a stuck lid off something, another you randomly require a pair of tweezers or nippers from your plastic model tool kit, and what could have required an hour-long work-around or a trip to the store is over in a couple minutes and you can get on with your day.
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