I remember hearing my father’s distraught voice yelling up from the basement that rhetorical question, "who used my chisel as a screw driver?!" No one answered him. I didn’t fess up when he used that same tone from the bathroom, "who used my razor to shave her legs?!"

I own that chisel now. Yes, I did use it as a screw driver and just about anything else except as a chisel.

My father had lots of cool tools but I was a girl so wasn’t taught how or what to use them for. I was on my own in my creative adventures. My mother took it upon herself to teach me how to make an extension cord.

We lived in a 20 room Victorian mansion with few outlets. Extension cords were very important. That’s when I learned the difference between a philips head and a straight blade screw driver. It changed my life.

Without tools, I’ve improvised. I’ve accidentally broken the tips off of expensive knives in the effort to use cutlery in place of a screwdriver, smashed a tin and glass thermos against a coconut for lack of a hammer and I have dulled and nicked my father’s chisels.

Get tools. They don’t have to be expensive. They don’t have to necessarily fit your hand (although manufacturers are making pretty and smaller tools for women) but they do have to be available. Put them in the kitchen junk drawer, have a small bag of them in the closet upstairs, keep them in your underwear drawer, but have them so when that pot lid falls apart or the handle on the drawer needs to be re-attached you don’t use a knife from your grandmother’s flatware.






Oh…and one other thing that I personally can’t live without. Ear protection. Get some and use them when you vacuum, use the blender, mow the lawn or use the power drill. I’m the only one in my family that still hears crickets.