ladies hardly go into hardware stores, preferring to let their men do the shopping in places commonly associated with heavy lifting and strenuous pounding. but i actually like going into hardware stores, browsing through cabinet handles and doorknobs, rolling out small garden wheelbarrows and testing different colored bulbs and fluorescent lights. i’m not handy in home improvement, but having been raised in an environment of construction, i find myself quite at home browsing around tools and fixtures. plus, i am frequently surprised by the things i find.

our recent trip to the handyman diy store yielded the following items:

tweezers with led light

tweezer with led light is available in various colors. i got the green one.

i believe tweezers with light are also available in beauty stores (i have seen them online in sephora and other foreign retailers), but i haven’t seen much of them around here yet. the most serious challenge in plucking (aside from ingown hairs, of course), is finding adequate light source to help us weed out even the most hidden of hairs. as for me, i usually end up turning my face up against the sunlight or under fluorescent lights, which usually hurt my eyes after a while. so the tweezers with light is a happy solution to my age-old problem.

tide to go bleach pen

bleach pen for my messy little accidents

no matter how hard i twirl that spaghetti with my fork, my top still ends up mottled with tomato sauce. i guess i don’t have the chops to eat spaghetti clean. i love sauces, i let siomai wade in puddles of soy sauce and calamansi, and i am one of those jologs people who soup their rice with gravy in kfc, so anyone can tell that i am no stranger to food stains. fortunately, cleansers now come in marker form (it certainly looks like your average marker), small enough to carry in your purse. i won’t leave home without it, especially if i’m wearing white for the day. so bring on the kare-kare and bagoong, i can deal with the small accidents, no sweat.

bleach pens are also best for parents who go out with their babies and/or toddlers.

key caps with personality

these caps look like something you'd find in gift gate, not the handyman

if you’re someone who locks up everything and frequently fumbles for keys in confusion, typically taking two or three tries on the keyhole before landing the right fit, then you should seriously consider getting key caps. like me. these will help you tell your keys apart, thus saving you time and keeping you from frustration.

i know there are key disks you can buy in supply stores to color code your massive collection of keys, but how boring is that? i want to tap into my inner nerd and use glow-in-the-dark skeleton key caps.

glow-in-the-dark skeleton key caps

monkey and skeleton keys… get it? get it? oh sh**, i am a nerd.