How about starting a mini tool set with the odd things that come out of Christmas Crackers and other gifts like a toffee hammer? Gill Saxon describes how she gave these odd mini objects a new purpose in her article below.
A tiny toffee hammer for a mini tool set
I started putting together my miniature tool set a very long time ago, when someone gave our family some toffee in a foil tray with its own little silver toffee hammer to break into pieces. After we’d finished the toffee (our poor teeth!) I was reluctant to throw the toffee hammer away because I thought it might come in handy. I put it in a drawer and if anything needed a little tap – a drawing pin for instance – out it came.
Years went by and every now and then I came across other little bits and pieces which I thought might be handy round the house, for cleaning something perhaps, or prising a lid off a jar or puncturing a hole in something – without ruining my husband’s cherished tool kit which his father had given him.
A tiny screwdriver for a mini tool set
But it wasn’t until I got a tiny screwdriver set in a Christmas cracker that I realised that what I had been doing was assembling my own little tool kit. And it was amazing how often it came in handy. It saved my fingernails getting broken so many times e.g when opening the battery compartments of small toys and sets of Christmas lights, scraping labels off jars and so on.
Storing my mini tool set
After a while I started storing all the things I assembled in a spare toiletry bag and an old cassette tape box. I put lighter items in the toiletry bag and heavier ones in the cassette box and kept them together in I my study. Every week I use one of those tools. I don’t know what I would do without them.
Collecting miniature tools
Christmas is a great time to start one of these kits because Christmas crackers are full of little things which nobody knows what to do with. They often just get thrown away. Yet with a bit of imagination you could give these things a purpose in life. It doesn’t matter if they get broken in use because they were not expensive. They’re small they so they don’t take up much space.
What makes a good miniature tool?
So what makes a good tool? Ask yourself – could it cut, file, clean in small places, squirt, apply oil or paint in a restricted space? Could it save your fingernails when opening packaging or lids? Could it scrape, funnel, sharpen things, knock in a nail?
I feel a small sense of triumph when somebody, in the middle of a little household job, says :”What I really need now is something which could….” and I get my toolkit and find them what they want. They always look very surprised!
Most useful miniature tool
What’s my most useful tool? A plastic guitar pick belonging to one of my children. Thin and flexible, it is a brilliant substitute for your own nails. I keep one in my handbag as well.
