Introduction
For most household repairs you do not need top of the range kits. I have a wide range of tools gathered together over many years; some I inherited from different people, some came from yard sales, while others I had to buy myself.
None of my tools are high-end but most are of good quality and have lasted years.
Care and Safety
Many tools, like chisels, work best when they are sharp, they work better and less likely to slip or bind, but that carries its own risks. Be careful, humans are not regenerative animals and you'll surely miss a couple of fingersif you lose them.
Tools have no conscience. I have a reciprocating saw for some of the heavier work, it's great at cutting through wood and thin metal but doesn't care if it cuts through flesh and bone. Be careful!
Advice
A job's not finished until everything is put back where it belongs.
Measure and cut carefully.
Bolts, Nails and Screws
Whenever I make or repair something I like to use the same type of fastener, bolt, nail or screw, in it. Sometimes you have to buy a pack of them for bigger jobs, but I've got myself into the habit of dismantling anything that's ready to be thrown away and keeping all the fasteners from it.
These get kept together in a box or jar but now and then I'll go and sort them out by type and size.
Part of my collection of fasteners
I'm cheap, or rather do not like spending more money than I need to, so most of the sets of samll drawers I keep them in come from yard sales or store sales.
This collection of fasteners are great for small jobs.
Sockets
I've got two socket sets I use most often. The cases are all smashed up and I don't think either were complete when I got them, so neither set contain all the original sockets.
Missing sockets
I'm usually careful when putting tools away but there's three sizes that I lose most often - 10mm, 1/2" and 9/16". I don't know why, maybe gremlins take them? Maybe they just teleport themselves back to whatever planet they come from? They may even slowly sink into the earth without trace if you don't watch them.
It's nearly always just one of those three sizes. Maybe in the far future they'll make up a new layer like the K-Pg boundary layer (the one just after the dinosaurs went extinct), they could call it the 10mm-boundary layer made up of millions of lost sockets.
Some sockets are hard to replace. In early June 2026, I managed to lose another 10mm socket. I went to a couple of hardware stores in town and all of them were sold out of 10mm, 3/8" drive, short sockets. I ended up ordering a pack of four online.
10mm, 1/2" and 9/16" sockets go missing so often people write blog posts about it. It happens because they are the most common, smallest, and most frequently handled sockets, and their design makes it easy for them to roll into hidden places.