5 Tools From Lowe's You Can Fit On Your Keychain

Keychains can get weighed down with all sorts of stuff, from baubles and knick-knacks meant to express our quirky individuality (I have a tiny Starscream on mine!) to, well, even more keys. Tools and gadgets, though, can come in handy — provided you have the right one for a given situation.

Of course, keychain tools won't alleviate the mass or pocket-pulling weight of a keyring. It's a good idea to consider what you really need to carry around. Still, having one or two small doohickeys hanging out with your house or work keys isn't a bad idea.

Below you'll find a list of a few of our personal picks for keychain tools you can find at Lowe's that might be worth a ponder, arranged from what we think would be more nuanced uses to the most universally helpful.

Nite Ize's $1.98 Curvyman Cord Supervisor is more useful than you might think. Sure, the most obvious function is to hold your wired earbuds while keeping the cord from tangling up in your pocket or bag. However, it's not going to do much for wireless audio devices. But you can go beyond earbuds.

For example, if you plan to work in a coffee shop, it could be helpful to shorten your laptop's charging cable to avoid potential trips or wall damage. Or if you're traveling, it would be a simple and handy way to wrap up your smartphone's charging cord — either while in transit or when you're waiting between transfers and find a free charging spot.

Heck, it could even be a decent makeshift hair tie holder. Then you can keep multiple ties on your keychain and grab one from the collection when the occasion calls for it.

Pockets, bags, and even pockets within bags are common ways to carry things like medication, money, and paperwork. However, something like OTR's Storage Pod offers something more secure. Kind of.

It's too compact to hold onto anything substantial, but a small water-resistant aluminum tube could be a very convenient and safe way to store a handful of very particular items. Obviously, it would be a great place to tuck away some backup cash if you ever need to unexpectedly grab a cab or buy something when cards aren't an option.

The tube's sealed design means you could also use it to house things like important (but small) documentation. Perhaps the pod's best use is as a pill box. Even something as simple as a few headache pills may feel like a small miracle when you find yourself out in the wider world without access to your home medicine cabinet.

Something you might not immediately consider, but it makes sense when you think about it, is the addition of more keychains to your keychain (and not in, like, a meme sense). And that's what the Phone Prop Keychain from Minute Key offers: a clip-on, clip-off extension to your existing key ring, allowing for additional keys or tools.

These kinds of removable keyrings are a great way to organize the things you hang from them, mostly by keeping your essentials (house or apartment keys, car keys, etc.) on your primary ring and then adding other less "always needed" things to the other one. As a bonus, it makes sharing specific sets of keys or tools much easier, since you can unclip the bundle and hand over the necessary portion to whoever needs it. Similarly, you can unclip unneeded keyrings to shed weight and bulk from your pocket, bag, or belt.

Enhancing this particular keychain clip is its ability to double as a compact phone prop. You can use it to both organize and add to your keyring, as well as hold up your smartphone for video calls, recording, playing music, or watching videos.

It's easy to overlook the utility of a dedicated flashlight these days, since we're usually carrying one around in our pockets. However, there are situations where using your phone's built-in flashlight may not cut it — in which case it'd be nice to have a compact and standalone flashlight like Lux-Pro's LP130 Keychain Flashlight nearby.

The benefit of good keychain flashlights is that they're separate from your phone and can be carried around with your keys. Because maybe you're talking on your phone, so you can't use the light. Or you're in a situation where you're unwilling or uncomfortable pulling your phone out. Or it's raining and you'd rather risk the $6 flashlight than a $500+ smartphone. You may even need two light sources, so you can use your phone and the flashlight at the same time.

You'll need to take power and longevity into consideration with this one. The Lux-Pro requires four LR44 (or four AG-13) button batteries to run. The light does come with batteries, but you'll have to replace them once they run out.

You knew a multi-tool would appear on this list somewhere. In this case, it's the Multi-function Key Tool from Minute Key, which offers seven different brands of tool functionality wrapped up in something that's basically the same size and shape as a regular key.

Specifically, the solid metal shape contains a bottle opener, ruler, scoring edge, screwdriver, serrated edge, wire stripper, and wrench. Not quite as all-encompassing as something like a more dedicated Amazon Multi-Tool, but consider this: It's significantly smaller and lighter.

Even with its limitations, that's still seven tools that take up less overall space or weight (possibly both) than any other single entry on this list. Additionally, each of these tools could potentially have further uses beyond their original scope, such as using one of the cutting edges as a box opener or using the scoring edge to remove the cellophane from a new CD or DVD.

Determining what keychain-mounted tools fit the bill was a fairly straightforward affair. We considered which tools would be most useful to have within reach. Then, we dug into Lowe's website listings, pulling notable examples from aggregate customer review scores and "Most Popular" standouts. We also tried to avoid repeats, which is why this list isn't 80% multitools.