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Maintaining a house can be intimidating, but so can paying contractors to fix every little thing. And there’s nothing worse than calling a professional in a panic only to find out the problem was a simple, easy fix that you’ve now paid hundreds of dollars for someone else to do.
But a lot of home maintenance and repair projects are actually really easy—if you have the necessary tools. That starts with a basic toolbox, of course, but in addition to fundamental tools like a hammer, screwdrivers, and a basic power drill, there are plenty of gadgets and gizmos that make all the painful aspects of home maintenance just a little easier. Over the years, I’ve collected a lot of these little tools and whenever there’s a problem in need of fixing in my house, they subtract just a little bit of effort. Here are some of my favorites.
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Electric plunger
Modern life has some constants. Your internet speeds will never be fast enough, the show you want to watch will always be on the streaming service you’re not paying for, and toilets will clog. That sense of panic you feel when the water level in the bowl just keeps rising and rising? That’s real. And justified.
You most likely have a plunger somewhere for a toilet emergency, but old-school rubber plungers just don’t work that well. If the clog in your toilet is serious, you’ll work up a sweat with that old thing and get nowhere. That’s why I love this power plunger. It uses air pressure to blast that clog out of the way, so instead of plunging and plunging (and plunging) you can clear the way in an instant and get on with your life.
Endoscope camera
Do you know what’s in your walls, under your floors, or living in your attic? Probably not—and you don’t need to until there’s a problem. But to find out what’s in your walls or behind heavy appliances, you need to move stuff, tear out drywall, pull up floor planks, or do other sweaty damage to your house—unless you buy an endoscopic camera.
Using an app on your phone or tablet, you can easily peek behind things. Instead of ripping out the entire wall to see wiring, plumbing, or exactly what kind of critter has made a home in there, you can drill a small hole and poke the flexible camera in and see everything in perfect clarity. This has saved me more unnecessary work (and sleepless nights) than I can count.
Wood repair tape
Wood is a durable, beautiful, and flexible material; my cats are sharp-clawed demons who view every wood surface in the house as a scratching post. There are a lot of ways to repair scratched-up wood, but I’ve learned to keep a roll of wood repair tape on hand for larger or deeper scratches. You have to match the tape to your specific piece and take your time applying the tape so it lines up well with the existing grain, but if you do those steps you’ll be amazed how good this repair looks, and it takes just a few minutes.
Construction jack
A few years ago, I decided to do a quickie refresh in my mother’s kitchen, throwing up some new cabinets and counter tops—and thus I learned the hard way that hanging wall cabinets by yourself is no fun. I also learned the value of a construction jack. These beauties not only hold up cabinets, they can hold doors in place while you pop the hinge pins in and out, or hold drywall panels up until you can get a few screws into them, or lift heavy things a few inches off the floor so you can clean, make repairs, or slide something under them. Any job that involves lifting something and holding it in place is instantly easier.
Magnetic wristband
It looks kind of dumb and the concept is deceptively simple, but this magnetic wristband has changed my whole attitude toward home repairs. All those screws, bolts, bits, and nails that you need to keep track of just pop onto the magnet instead of rolling directly (inevitably) toward the nearest gap in order to vanish into some sort of shadow dimension, never to be seen again.
Extendable duster
Cleaning is a big part of home maintenance. A clean house is a more efficient (not to mention more pleasant) house, but cleaning your house can be a real drag, especially when it comes to stuff like window blinds, ceiling fan blades, or other spots that are a) out of easy reach and/or b) difficult to effectively scrub with traditional cleaning tools.
That’s where this extendable duster comes in. Without having to break out the stepladder, this tool lets me easily clean window treatments, ceiling fans, window trim, the tops of kitchen cabinets, furniture legs—and any small, tight space where dust can collect. It speeds up the whole process and keeps the house as dust-free as possible.
Ladder stabilizer
Ladder accidents are common—more than 20,000 nonfatal injuries every year involve ladders. If you’ve ever positioned a ladder…creatively…when working on your house, stop doing that. This ladder leveling tool makes using a ladder on stairs and uneven surfaces a whole lot safer and easier, and it can stow tools and supplies, too. It can also be used to push the ladder away from a vertical wall so you don’t find yourself so close to the wall that you can’t work effectively.
Profile tool
If you’ve ever tried laying tile, carpet, or anything else on your floors, you know how tricky it can be to cut around corners and obstacles, especially if they’re not simple squares. I’ve wasted so many tiles trying to eyeball my way around trim and pipes. But no more, because I’ve learned to use a hunk of cheap plastic called a contour gauge tool. It’s mind-meltingly simple: You push it up against the area you need to snip around, then trace the shape onto whatever you’re laying down. Now you can make perfect cuts without tearing your hair out.
Headlamp
I have no idea why it took me so long to buy a simple, cheap headlamp (this is the one I picked up), but it was one of the best purchases of my home-owning life. As a man who has spent his whole life with a small flashlight clenched between his teeth while wriggling in crawl spaces, suddenly being able to just, you know, see what I’m doing without juggling an extra tool has made everything much easier.
Basin wrench
Changing a kitchen or bathroom faucet isn’t a terribly difficult job. Especially these days, when many store-bought faucets have easy plastic installation kits. But in order to install that new faucet, you have to get the old faucet off your sink or vanity, and that sometimes means wrestling with a metal nut that’s been frozen in place for decades—in the tightest and least-accessible space ever designed—a space where no wrench can open wide enough and no hand can comfortably fit. I once seriously considered just removing an entire vanity and buying a new one because the faucet nut simply would not budge.
And then I discovered the basin wrench. Suddenly, removing a bolt in a tight space was a breeze. If you want to be able to swap out faucets at will in your house, having this cheap tool on hand will change your life.