For now get something better than a cardboard box for your tools, something you can carry all the basics around with. A bucket works, a bucket with a handyman belt on it (they sell these for buckets) works well enough. When you run out of space just know that no matter what you upgrade to you will run out of space again. Start small and upgrade as needed.

A homeowner handyperson help and discussion space would be great.

Know what needs filters or other consumables now - get and read the manuals. No one does all the ‘required’ maintenance but you should be making an informed choice to ignore them. Example, my water heater recommends a full flush every 6 months to prevent scale buildup - lol yeah right. Add up all these kinds of tasks and say goodbye to any free time you have. BUT now I know and if I am doing some other maintenance or have the water/power off for some other reason then maybe I’ll tack on a flush of my water heater while I’m at it.

I hope you have fire extinguishers and a plunger. I get your point and generally agree but with homeownership some amount of over preparedness grants peace of mind.

Edit: Waiting until you need something also eliminates the option of research and buying used. A lot of really good tools can be found for very cheap but if you wait till you need it your only option will be whatever the big box store has in stock today. I recently got stuck with a cheap chainsaw and while it has done everything I needed it to I could have bought a much better one for probably less money AND not given money to the hardware store if I’d have done it in advance.

I mentioned this elsewhere in the thread but I use a dedicated email for the house for this. It is worth doing - use the format that works but do it. I do like emailing this stuff to myself so that I can can access the paint color while I am at the hardware store when I inevitably forget to check that before I leave the house lol. And I just use it to communicate with contractors so I get all the notes and invoices saved at the same time. Anyway, not trying to debate the method as that matters WAY less than the idea of keeping track of this stuff.

OH, and one more thing I track - take photos anytime you have a wall open or a trench dug or whatever. Later if you need to come back to it you will know exactly what is behind the wall and where which will make it much easier to do whatever new things you are doing. This feels silly sometimes, surely I’ll remember where I ran that wire, but the next time you need to get behind the wall could be 10 or 20 years from now.

Create an email address for the house and use it for everything house related. Contractors, mtg payments, instruction/owner’s manuals for appliances, etc, all get sent here and it’s very helpful. Also suggest doing a first look for manuals now. When you need to fix your water heater - even if you opt to pay a contractor - having read the manual first will put put you in a much better position to understand what needs to be done or what you are choosing to pay for.

Tool wise I’d include a couple pipe wrenches plus a 90° angle one for under sinks. The actual ones are probably less useful for plumbing inside the house but are just useful tools. A pickaxe is useful for small irrigation or electrical trenches. A pry bar for - you’ll find a use. Someone else mentioned a hand truck which is really handy. Basic electrical tools, lineman plyers, wire strippers, an electrical tester. Some basic chemicals, acetone, alcohol, bleach, etc will come in handy for cleaning/prepping (don’t store acids around tools/metal unless you put them in an airtight container as an acidic pH in the air causes rust). Other basic consumables are good too - a tube of caulk, electrical tape, couple boxes of screws and nails, plumbing tape, a small tube of epoxy, I tend to buy an extra of these kinds of things as I see them so that I have them when I need them. Once you have all this and other basic tools it’s awesome to have a project and be able to do it without needing to go to the hardware store.

Not something you can just go buy but I keep an eye out for jars and drawers of junk at yardsales and thrift stores. Have bought a couple of little Grey boxes with the 30 tiny drawers full of odds and ends someone else collected - super handy. All kinds of oddball stuff, hinges, springs, rubber gaskets, cotter pins, that have saved me many trips to the store.

Outdoor bug lights - yellow bulbs that don’t attract bugs. Not sure why I’d never heard of these but they make the patio more enjoyable. Not gonna keep bugs away but at least there isn’t a swarm of them.

Good luck!

Seriously, the number of articles with wild headlines and text that describes a video or picture - WITHOUT SAID VIDEO OR PICTURE - is too damn high. Really the number of “news stories” that are just this is too damn high to say nothing of the fact that anything actually useful or critical just isn’t going to make the news in favor of whatever corporate BS they are shilling.

I mostly opted out a long time ago and while I’m often out of the loop on lots of things I generally can’t avoid hearing big news and have more room for other things that I actually care about.

Agree. Stranger than fiction is my exception. Edit: Actually read the post. Op has good taste.

Did you get the same things or different combos of foams? I like the idea of mixing and matching till I get what I want.

Why three mattresses? Wear or for other rooms or something?