Your (Actual) Toolbox: An Insider's Guide To Informed Adulting In

ACROSS AMERICA — When we ask what’s in your toolbox, we aren’t curious about your work skills. We mean: If you needed to put a nail in the wall, would you have to use a shoe?

Every responsible adult, of course, needs a proper hammer. Substituting a shoe for a hammer will get you by only in a college dorm room.

Get a basic 16-inch smooth-faced claw hammer, which can be used for everything from assembling furniture to pulling out the nails you drove into the wall with your shoe.

Here are eight more tools everyone should have, curated in part from an excellent list from “This Old House”:

Stud finder: Go ahead and laugh, but you need a stud finder if you plan to hang something heavy on the wall — or, really, any time you hammer a nail into the wall. Hint: Studs are the floor-to-ceiling boards, usually located 16 inches apart, behind your walls.

Set of screwdrivers: You’ll use them for more tasks and fixes than you can imagine. Make sure you get a set with both common slotted and Phillips heads, and screwdrivers small enough to fit in tight spaces. The purpose of these tools made clear by their name, but they’re also handy mini-crowbars to open paint cans and such.

Set of pliers: Get various sizes and styles that allow you to get a good grip on almost everything — the standard tongue-and-groove pliers, split-joint pliers with adjustable jaws, side-cutting pliers and needle-nose pliers.

Crescent wrenches: This is a must-have to stop leaks in plumbing fixtures, but also to tighten nuts on swingsets. Get one with a long handle so you can apply extra leverage, and one with a short handle to get into tight spaces.

Tape measure: Stop eyeballing and “guesstimating.” Exact measurements count in DIY projects. Pro tip: a 2x4 at the lumberyard may not be exactly 2 inches by 4 inches.

Duct tape: We shouldn’t have to explain this. It may not be entirely true that “if it can’t be fixed with duct tape, it can’t be fixed,” but everyone should have a roll or two of this super-strong adhesive tape for quick household repairs. Pro tip: General-purpose duct tape isn’t actually used to repair HVAC ducts; temperature extremes can cause it to flag or fall off and make it a temporary fix at best.

Flashlight: Every home should have a charged, ready-to-use flashlight in case of a power failure, but your toolbox flashlight should function more as a rechargeable work light.

Utility knife: Get one with a comfortable rubber-covered handle, and one with a built-in blade storage. Using dull blades is as unsafe as it is frustrating. You’ll use this often, whether opening a box, shaving wood, sharpening pencils or marking mortises.

(Editor’s note: “An Insider's Guide To Informed Adulting In America” is a weekly feature on Across America Patch to help people navigate life’s tricky situations and get their ducks in a row.)