5 New Lowe's Products That Come In Handy In The Garage

Garages house lots of things: stuff you no longer use but haven't gotten around to giving away yet, cars, spare equipment, and, if you're a bit of a handyperson, tools to build your personal projects. If you're starting to build your garage tool collection, you might not know where to begin — there are several categories of items to choose from that address a variety of needs. For instance, if you're going to be woodworking in your spare time, you'll need stuff like clamps and drills. 

That said, while there are specific tools that may be uniquely useful for a craft or job, there are a few products that you always want to keep handy. Some of these help keep your garage organized; others play an instrumental role in completing whatever DIY projects you have planned around the house. To that end, if you've just moved into a new home, here's a comprehensive list of tools to help you get started.

When buying these tools, though, it's important to shop for quality first. It's a bit counterintuitive, since there's a tendency to seek out the best deal, but ideally, you should be looking for established name brands you can trust so you can buy a tool once and not have to worry about it breaking on the job. One of the most trusted marketplaces, Lowe's, has released a bevy of new products, and quite a few of them could make your garage work a lot easier.

According to a 2022 survey by Craftsman, over half of homeowners in the U.S. work on personal projects in their garages. From these numbers, the odds that you're going to get your hands dirty with some form of craftsmanship are pretty high, and if you're going to work effectively, you're going to need a dedicated space for your tools. 

That's where adjustable benches like Kobalt's 42-inch workbench come into play. Instead of always working at a fixed height, which might have you leaning over for some tasks or take away valuable storage space underneath the bench, the Kobalt workbench can be extended to any height between 26 and 39 inches using the leveling feet. You can get slightly more ground clearance when you use the casters — it can be adjusted from 29 to 42 inches. We recommend using the leveling feet if you're certain you want the workbench fixed in one place for a long time, but if you prefer mobility, you should go for the casters.

As for the actual work surface, it measures 48 inches wide and can safely carry 300 lbs. Two drawers are attached beneath it, so you can store your tools away when they're not in use to avoid clutter. If 300 lbs. of support sounds too light for your needs, the Kobalt 72-inch workbench is a far sturdier, steel-constructed version that can support up to 2,000 lbs. with a slightly smaller adjustable height range (32.8 to 40.8 inches). The two models are similarly priced at $278 and $279, respectively.

Whether you're crafting, repairing, or installing new equipment, there's no denying that power tools are must-haves around the garage. The wide range of tools, from saws to drills, all play specific roles in the world of craftsmanship, and you're going to need them if you intend to build on any scale. Unfortunately, if you've only just started your collection and are thinking of buying tools one after the other, it can quickly become an expensive endeavor.

Instead of buying your power tools piece by piece, you could go for the Craftsman V20 6-Tool Power Tool Kit currently on sale at Lowe's. For $199 (discounted from $349), you'll get a drill/driver, an impact driver, a reciprocating saw, a circular saw, an oscillating tool, and a task light. A charger, two 2Ah batteries, a double-sided bit tip, and sandpaper are included. There's also a three-year warranty that covers all the equipment in the tool kit.

You can switch between two speed settings when using the drill; it reaches up to 1,500 RPM with its 280 UWO rating. The impact driver is even more powerful at 2,800 RPM to meet your fastening and loosening needs. If six tools are a bit too much to add to your arsenal at once, Craftsman also offers a four-tool kit without the oscillating tool or the circular saw, but there's no discount on that offer — it's presently priced at $239.

Garages can be notoriously stuffy places, even when you take steps to ensure proper ventilation. Dust gathers easily in stuffy environments, and if you're working with wood in any form, loose filings can contribute to an already uncomfortable situation. As a result, cleaning your garage can be a bit of a full-time job — we advise deep cleaning your floors regularly and adopting habits like sealing gaps between the door and windows.

A vacuum cleaner is a necessity for keeping your garage clean, and given the space constraints, a handheld option is best suited to the awkward maneuvers you can expect to perform. Dewalt's cordless handheld vacuum cleaner is one of the better options in this regard, and it's currently on sale at Lowe's for $169 (or $160.55 when you use a MyLowe's Rewards Credit Card). With 46 cubic feet per minute of airflow, Dewalt's vacuum cleaner is powerful enough to sweep up jobsite debris like small screws, nails, and drywall dust, meaning you can run it over most waste from your projects.

Lighting is also a concern in garages — the layout often limits natural lighting. Unless you deliberately ensure that every corner is well-lit, some dark corners could hide debris. To combat this, DEWALT's vacuum comes with a built-in LED, and you get up to 21 minutes of vacuuming with its battery.

If you're going to be building anything in your garage, you'll most likely need fasteners. Screws and nails are usually at the top of the list, and in the case of the latter, a good old hammer can do the trick without any problems. With screws, though, there's more of a fit problem. Say you have one screwdriver with a permanent bit lying around the garage, and it doesn't quite fit the screw that you've decided to use to fasten your work. That can be quite frustrating.

To avoid such an experience, screwdriver sets are generally preferred. This way, you simply swap one bit out for another if needed. Klein's 11-in-1 Multi-Bit Screwdriver Set takes care of this with its multipurpose tooling — it holds eight of the most commonly used tips and also converts to three nut driver sizes (1/4, 5/16, and 3/8 inches). At $18.98, its interchangeable blade is designed for quick switching, too.

If you'd rather have a full set of specialized screwdrivers, Klein also offers an 8-Piece Screwdriver Set that covers a variety of purposes for $32.98. A magnetizer/demagnetizer comes with the package too, so you can magnetize your screwdriver and stop loose screws from falling into crevices. It's not a permanent effect; the demagnetizer strips it of its magnetic properties.

Managing space in your garage can be challenging. Garages are generally not big enough to contain every item in your inventory. It gets worse if you decide to park your car in there, too; a workstation here, a bike there, and you'll be pressed to think up creative solutions for storing your items. It's why we outlined some things to do to make a garage feel bigger than it actually is — and investing in storage racks was one of them.

With storage racks, you don't want to go too small, and you most likely don't want an industrial-sized installation either. To this end, Kobalt's heavy-duty shelving unit could be up your alley. It stands seven feet tall and features four tiers of steel-wire shelves — each of which can support up to 1,500 lbs. of evenly distributed weight. These shelves are adjustable in increments of two-and-a-half inches, so if you have particularly large inventory to store on one level, you can shift the others around to accommodate it.

Six storage boxes of varying sizes also come with the storage rack: two medium (34 quarts), two large (96 quarts), and two extra large (124 quarts) containers. This way, you can compartmentalize your inventory by size and use the adjustable settings to fit them accordingly. The Kobalt heavy-duty shelving unit retails for $376.96.

When selecting these tools, we considered two simple questions: how applicable are these tools to a wide range of tasks in the garage, and how efficient are they at the task they perform? For the first question, we considered "handiness" to be the likelihood of a regular homeowner noticing the absence of any of these tools in their garage. By default, products that would only be instrumental to a niche pursuit like carving, for instance, weren't considered.

Once the list of viable items was whittled down to a selection of widely applicable tools, we looked for the best possible options currently on sale at Lowe's. To determine the quality of the items on sale, we used a benchmark of at least a 4.0-star average from a minimum of 50 verified purchases. Every handpicked option addresses a unique need for operating a garage, from space management to sanitation and, of course, actual crafting.