8 Harbor Freight Items Savvy Homeowners Should Be Stocking Up On For Summer

In the popular imagination, summer is all fireflies and grilling and watching projected movies outdoors with family and friends until late in the evening. From one dog day to the next, though, it's more likely to be about dirty fingernails and grass clippings and hitting the sack early after a quick shower. Because however much fun you plan to have, there's a correspondingly large amount of work to be done first. The last thing you need is an emergency trip to the hardware store for the basic necessities of managing summer, so we've put together a list for you of things you can find at Harbor Freight to stay prepared for anything: extension cords to move power around, and straps and anchors to keep things in place; pins and connectors to put things together, and grease and oil to keep things moving separately (and plenty more ways to deal with the peculiarities of summer). When selecting the right items, we went for those with a rating of at least 3.7 stars and a minimum of 100 reviews.

These aren't all the tools you'll need — not even the indispensable Harbor Freight budget tools — but the supplies that you should have on hand, but probably don't. They're the consumables and forgettables and refills and accessories, and they're just as necessary as the tools. Harbor Freight might not be the place for raspberry lemonade recipes or advice for brightening up your home decor for summer, but it's where you can find all the little unsung heroes that make the fun stuff possible.

Oh, sure, you need flashlights year-'round. But for many Americans, summer means nights outdoors, often where no one ever thought to put a floodlight. It's also prime storm season for large swaths of the country, so power outages can be a real consideration. You should probably have a flashlight per person and a flashlight per room handy, and extras to replace the ones your kids rolled under who-knows-what when playing fort back in the spring. At only $2.49 ($1 during Dollar Days), the 144 lumen ultrabright portable LED work light/flashlight is rated highly: 4.8 across almost 47,000 reviews.

If being able to see, day or night, is always a summer priority, being able to hear well isn't always a great idea. Summer is a time of whining two-cycle and roaring four-stroke engines as all the lawn and garden work get done — and then there's the Fourth of July fireworks. Fortunately, Harbor Freight usually has a decent deal around on RANGER Foldable Ear Muffs that offer 26 dB of noise reduction, about what you'd expect to see on an airport tarmac [c]. Rated 4.7 with over 1,700 reviews, you can currently get them for $5.39.

You say you're going to do it every year, and maybe this is the year to finally stock up on garden host quick-connects to make moving hoses around and swapping out attachments easier. You probably won't find a better deal than Harbor Freight's all-brass $7.99 Greenwood garden hose quick-connect six-piece set (rated 3.7 across nearly 2,000 reviews). It's a great place to start, and the brass won't get brittle after a season in the sun. But note that you can expect some leaking, according to reviewers, and at a glance these don't appear to be compatible with other quick-connect systems.

Remember the one-per-person-and-one-per-room rule for flashlights? For gloves, the rule is something like three pairs per person because some will get lost, some will be in the wash, some will get wet in the morning, and some will need to be dry in the afternoon. You need them for deep-cleaning your house and deep-digging your garden. Rated 4.8 across over 100 reviews, you can pick up Hardy goatskin split leather gloves for $3 a pair during Dollar Days (regularly $6.99). "Unbeatable quality and protection," wrote one customer. Supplement with Hardy string knit gloves (six pairs for $4.99) as backups and for less demanding tasks.

We don't always plan in advance for outdoor life. This clearly shows up in the fact that, while you can't play Twister indoors without breaking an outlet, we don't have an electric receptacle in every other tree and fencepost like we should. The solution, awkward as it may be, is the humble extension cord. Buy an outdoors cord if you need one, and "brighter is better" is a good rule for tripping hazards. Rated 4.9 with over 1,700 reviews, you can currently get a VANGUARD 10-gauge extension cord (usually overkill) for $37.99 and a more reasonable (and longer) 16-gauge cord for $13.99, rated 4.8 across 3,700-plus reviews.

A successful outdoors means knowing when to bring a little bit of inside to the outside, often in the form of overhead canopies that only work when the sun is directly overhead and bizarre half-tents meant to do something useful at the beach. Don't let a breeze carry them to the next county. For short-term tent-staking, consider the 10 in. Steel Tent Stakes. Rated 4.7 across 2,300-plus reviews, you get 6 for $6.99. For a longer-term anchoring job, try these 18-in screw-in ground anchors (currently $3 each and rated 4.1 with over 700 reviews).

All summer you will be strapping things to the top of your car, bungeeing things to your beach cart, trying to keep a tarp on a trailer load of compost, and ardently hoping that rainfly over your tent doesn't take flight. For lashing things to other things, there are endless options, but you can't go wrong with basics like the HAUL-MASTER lashing straps ($3 for 2 during Dollar Days and rated 4.6 with over 1,700 reviews). There's also the ball stretch cord sets ($2 for 4 during Dollar Days; rated 4.5 across over 1,200 reviews), which can hold down anything with grommets and plenty more besides.

That sound you hear in your nightmares — the sound of a machine or tool failing — is usually the result of insufficient lubrication. Mower blades spin on a crankshaft, chainsaw blades make their way around a bar, and string trimmers give you anger-management practice all by virtue of some lubricant or other ... and often more than one. Stock up at Harbor Freight on staples like the STP pre-mix fuel/oil for two-cycle engines. Rated 4.7 with over 200 reviews, one customer wrote, "Ran great. Started well. Minimal exhaust." There's also highly-rated engine oil for four-stroke engines, and bar and chain oil for your chainsaw blade.