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The first week in a new place, you find out what you don't own. The toilet clogs and there's no plunger. A cabinet door sags and the only screwdriver is the tiny one from an eyeglass kit. Something spills on the rug and all you have is paper towels.
None of it is expensive. It's just easier to buy on a calm Saturday than at 9 p.m. with water on the floor.
A first home needs three small kits: one for cleaning, one for small fixes, and one for the bad day. Here is what goes in each, with prices. All of it together runs about $300 to $480, plus a vacuum and a stepladder if you don't have them.
Kit One: The Cleaning Caddy
Twelve supplies handle almost every cleaning job in a house. You don't need a separate spray for every room.
Add a pair of rubber gloves (about $4) and two spray bottles (about $6), and label each bottle the day you fill it. Without the vacuum, the whole kit runs about $65 to $85. Keep it in a caddy you can carry (about $10 to $15), so the supplies come to the room. With small kids in the house, the caddy lives on a high shelf, not under the sink.
The One Chemistry Rule
Bleach never gets mixed with vinegar, ammonia or any other cleaner. Use one product, rinse, then use the next.
Kit Two: The Fix-It Drawer
Ten tools cover the small fixes that come up in the first year: a loose knob, a squeaky hinge, a nail hole, a curtain rod, a closet door off its track. They fit in one drawer.
That drawer comes to about $110 to $200. The one large thing to add is a short stepladder, about 4 feet (about $70 to $90). It reaches smoke alarms, light fixtures, ceiling fan switches and the tops of cabinets, and it replaces the kitchen chair that people fall off.
Ready to go past the basics? The fuller list of repair tools, and where it's worth spending more, is in essential tools every homeowner should own.
Kit Three: The Bad-Day Shelf
These are the things you can't go buy in the moment, because the moment is a clog, a dark house or a kitchen fire.
- A flange plunger (about $10 to $15). That's the toilet kind, with a sleeve that folds out of the cup. The flat cup plunger is for sinks.
- A barbed drain strip (about $3 to $5). It pulls a hair clog out of a tub or sink drain in a minute, with no chemicals.
- An LED flashlight or lantern (about $15 to $30) and spare batteries, in a place everyone knows.
- An outlet tester with a GFCI button (about $8 to $12). Plug it in and it tells you whether an outlet is wired right and whether its safety shutoff works.
- A 5 pound ABC fire extinguisher (about $40 to $60), near the kitchen exit, not beside the stove.
- A first-aid kit (about $20 to $35), with a list of what's inside taped to the lid.
- Safety glasses and work gloves (about $5 and $8). They cost less than one urgent care visit.
The shelf runs about $110 to $170.
What to Leave on the Shelf
- A separate spray for every room. Kitchen, bathroom and multi-surface sprays are mostly the same all-purpose cleaner in different bottles.
- Disinfecting wipes for everyday wiping. Most days a counter needs cleaning, not disinfecting, and the wipes leave a film on stone and glass.
- Plug-in air fresheners. They cover a smell. They don't remove it.
- A steam mop, if you have wood or laminate floors. Steam and those floors don't mix.
- The 200 piece tool set. You'll use ten of the pieces. Buy the ten, and add a tool when a job asks for it.
Buy As You Go
Specialty supplies, like a grout sealer or an enzyme cleaner for pet accidents, wait until a job sends you to the store for them. A shelf of things bought just in case is money and space you won't get back.
What It All Costs
Where the Jobs Are
A kit is only useful if you know what to do with it. Keeping House: The Everyday Handbook is the other half: 170 everyday jobs, room by room, each with how often it needs doing, how long it takes and what you'll need. The cleaning kit above is the book's own twelve, and its back pages price every tool and supply the jobs call for.