Pick Up Spilled Screws and Nails With a Bagged Magnet
The Problem
Knock over a box of screws or nails and picking them up by hand is slow — and you always miss the small ones that scatter. A bare magnet grabs them fast, but then they're stuck all over the magnet and you have to peel each one off, which is its own chore.
The Technique
- Turn a plastic bag inside out and set a strong magnet inside it, so the bag wraps the magnet.
- Sweep the bagged magnet over the spill. The screws and nails grab onto the bag right over the magnet.
- Holding the bag, pull the magnet up and away. With the magnet gone, the hardware drops off the bag on its own.
- Turn the bag right-side out with the hardware caught inside, ready to pour back into a container.
Pro tip: A strong rare-earth (neodymium) magnet pulls through the bag far better than a weak fridge magnet — the stronger the magnet, the faster you can sweep and the more it grabs in one pass.
Pro tip: The same trick works beyond a clean floor — drag it through grass or gravel to find dropped hardware outside, or through a pile of shop sweepings to pull the metal out of the sawdust.