Handy DIY Products Worth Buying at the Dollar Store

This won’t be a long post, but during my long saga with the master bathroom reno (next steps should be posting this weekend!), I wanted to pop in about a recent trip I made to the dollar store.

My trip was practically arbitrary, having decided just to stop in really quickly to see if I can find a disposable bucket for grout. I have some old dollar store trash bins I’ve kept in a stack in the garage for years, but I had finally depleted my stash and needed more. I have often used cheap dollar buckets instead of my 5-gallon buckets for tile projects because whenever I mix up materials (tile adhesive, grout, etc.), the product is usually half-dried by the time I start to clean up. This also means that it’s a beast to remove, and can make a huge mess in my yard while I clean everything out. By letting the leftover product simply dry up in the dollar bucket, I can then toss away the entire thing if I can’t get the dried slop to come off cleanly (it’s about 50/50 as to whether or not I need to reuse it).

It was time to restock, but I was very surprised to find a number of other great DIY supplies that I never knew were available. For $1 apiece, these make for some great items to keep around for home repair projects!

On this trip, I got:

• disposable particulate masks
• assorted foam brushes
• batteries
• small utility knives (I love having these all over the house… they are my go-to over scissors)
• 4×6 plastic tarp (decent size for the price!)
• rubber mallet (this was the most surprising find)
• cleaning towels (for wiping off grout haze)
• wrinkle releaser (not DIY necessarily, but good for photography)
• more buckets
• one-time use super glue (I don’t know about you guys, but mine always dry up between uses, so smaller containers is ideal!)
• not pictured: a set of mixing spoons (they came in a set and I’m out of paint sticks, so these were great as disposable mixing paddles)
• not pictured: drain declogger tool

Other items that I saw were available (but I don’t need, so I didn’t get, but worth noting):

• hammer
• level
• screw driver sets
• safety goggles
• tape measures
• work light/flash light (small, but still!)

It occurred to me that since my friends are in that stage of buying homes and such, stopping by and picking up a handful of these things is a great idea for a housewarming gift! I wouldn’t recommend that you buy things like a hammer, or a decent tape measure, or other tools that you really need quality for at a dollar store necessarily, but if a homeowner isn’t super handy and probably doesn’t have them already, it makes a great little gift in case they run into a DIY emergency (and new homeowners always do). If they do have quality tools, they can still appreciate the other items that one can never really have too many of, like tarps, or shop pencils, or utility knives.

Have you found anything at the dollar store that surprised you?

(P.S. Want other gift ideas? Here’s another housewarming or thank-you gift idea. Here’s another.)

The next post in the DIY master shower remodel series is probably getting finished up by the weekend, so be sure to come back for that!

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