Staple Gun Staples

Day 235: Staple Gun Staples
I'm finally admitting defeat. I will never take this box of staple gun staples back to the store to purchase the correct size for my staple gun. I bought these when Nicole was our au pair, so that would have made it 2003, the same year we moved into this house. I don't remember where I bought them, and of course I no longer have a receipt. (As a general rule, I keep receipts only for things I would never return, such as packs of gum.)

Sadly, for the past eleven years, I have had no staples for my staple gun, because I've been meaning to exchange these staples for the correct size. I've had to use Scotch tape, or wood glue, or thumb tacks, or nails, or paper-grade staples to jobs such as stapling the fabric back onto the couch or attaching fiberglass insulation to the garage wall.

I remember when I purchased my staple gun, in San Francisco in 1989, at the kind of packed-from-floor-to-ceiling hardware store you see in the City. It helped pay for graduate school: I stapled fliers up on all the light poles on campus, advertising typing services. (I'm a very fast typist.)

I still love my staple gun. For those of you who are searching for an anniversary or birthday gift, I give you words of wisdom from Greg Long, the Carpenter Guy: "Tools, not jewels." For the same price as hiring a carpenter, you can purchase awesome hammers, awls and table saws, and have the satisfaction of fixing your own things your own self.

But the tools need to be good. And they need to be complete. No weak, namby-pamby cordless drills on the cheap from Sears. Get something with torque, and a long-lasting, powerful battery. High carbon steel with black oxide coating. Get cast iron. Get diamonds.

If you do nothing else - if you purchase your tools at the Reuse Center, if you sharpen your knives on a rock in the backyard, if you use your wooden clogs as a hammer and your fingernail as a screwdriver - if you do nothing else, when you buy your staples...get the right size.