My favorite gifts are tools. Buy me a nice new router bit for Valentine's Day, for example, and you'll have bought my heart for the rest of the year. Buy me chocolates, and the effect fades much quicker.

By "tools," though, I mean those used in the kitchen as well as those in the garage or basement workshop. Good tools make our lives and jobs easier, and the best ones last a long time. My kitchen-loving kids always know they will get something good, and likely something they hadn't thought about, when they say they'd like a new cooking or food prep tool.

I've prepared a list of great gift ideas for the workshop that falls into that category. The kinds of things that don't often show up on wish lists, but that are nonetheless gratefully received and regularly used. Let me know if you find any useful ideas on the list.

The U.S. Fire Administration reports that there were 403,000 residential fires in 2008, resulting in 2,780 deaths and 13,560 injuries. The direct cost of those fires was $8.55 million.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 40 percent of fire deaths occur in homes without smoke alarms, and most of them occur during the winter. Smoking is the main cause of fire deaths, while cooking is the leading cause of fires and fire injuries.

I can't find statistics on how many fires begin in garages, but I know that a lot of them do. Garages typically contain a lot of combustible materials, and they are frequently used for tasks that require some type of incendiary device. Often, when a fire starts in the garage, it can develop into a major fire before anyone even knows about it.

That's why it's so important to stick a smoke alarm in the garage, preferably an interconnected alarm. That way, if a fire starts in the garage at night, alarms near sleeping areas will be triggered.

There's a good chance that you don't have a smoke alarm in your garage, because it is often not required. And some sources discourage them because false alarms from the garage can be a nuisance. You can reduce that problem by avoiding carbon monoxide detectors in the garage. For more information, see Shopping for a Smoke Alarm and Carbon Monoxide Detector.

Here's a story that makes me feel like I haven't even begun to tap my garage's potential. The Wall Street Journal has a story about a fellow named Anthony Toth, who really likes airplanes. He likes them so much, in fact, that he's constructed a replica of a first-class Pan Am 747 cabin in his garage.

Toth, who works for United Airlines, has spent more than 20 years and about $50,000 on his project, where friends and airline enthusiasts now gather from time to time to watch movies and sip cocktails.

Pan Am, which declared bankruptcy in 1991, was the first American airline to fly internationally and the first to fly Boeing 747 jumbo jets. Toth began collecting Pan Am items in the 1970s, while he was just a kid. He built his first replica of a cabin when he was 12. When he bought his first home a few years ago, he made sure that it had a garage large enough to contain his airplane cabin configuration.

The garage/cabin is not open to the public, but Toth hopes someday to turn his collection and creation into a museum. Fortunately, he lives in a condo, so he probably doesn't have to worry about where to store the mower.

I'm a little late to this offer, but there's still time to enter the Unveil Your Garage sweepstakes sponsored by Gladiator GarageWorks. The marketing pitch to the sweepstakes revolves around appealing to homeowners at various stages in their lives making the best use of their garages.

Three levels of prizes are awarded: Weekly, Life Phase and Grand. The later includes $2,000 in Gladiator merchandise and a phone consultation from TV host and DIY expert Karl Champley.

Even if you're not into entering contests, the Gladiator site is a useful spot to do some window shopping. They offer lots of ideas for making better use of your garage, and not coincidentally offer products (good quality!) to meet those needs. You might also want to take a look at 9 Steps to a Well-Organized Garage.

DiggersList is a brand new Web site focused around construction and home improvement projects. It's something of a Craigslist, but with a narrower focus.

The free site, which appears to be funded with advertising, allows contractors, suppliers and DIYers to buy, sell and trade excess building supplies and materials. It also offers the opportunity to post competitive bids for jobs and service.

The site currently serves 15 heavily populated markets in the United States, but expects to expand rapidly. I did a quick search on the Houston site and found a number of appliances, cabinets, tools and lawn equipment available. Could be a nice way for DIYers to pick up some low-cost tools and materials, and maybe even keep some perfectly useful stuff from winding up in a landfill.

See also How To Hire a Good Contractor.

It's always hard to buy something you hope you never have to use, like life insurance, or smoke alarms. But, more importantly, it's never good to be without such backups when you need them.

Fire extinguishers fall into that category. I've owned a few over the years and never once had to use one. I don't for a minute consider the expense to have been wasted, but with such a track record it's easy to understand why I, and others, tend to forget about such things.

With fire extinguishers there's the added problem, when you need one, of remembering how to use the thing. With flames kicking up nearby, you really don't want to have to take a few minutes to read instructions, do you?

First Alert has developed a new type of fire extinguisher that pretty much eliminates that problem. Their Tundra Fire Extinguishing Spray is as easy to use as spray paint or any other aerosol product. And it comes in a compact, 14-oz. can, which makes it easy to store in a closet or on a shelf anywhere in the house or garage. The 9-in. tall can is capable of discharging four times longer than a traditional fire extinguisher. It only costs about $17, and even less for a two-pack.

Might make a nice holiday gift, don't you think?

For more information on fire extinguishers, see How To Choose a Fire Extinguisher for Your Home.

I've written before about recycling old kitchen cabinets into storage units in other parts of the house. The November 2009 issue of This Old House magazine expands on this theme with a little how-to piece on turning kitchen cabinets into a nice-looking sideboard. The venerable Tom Silva shows how you can make the unit with three 18-in. base cabinets.

Silva's project features three new cabinets, but you can just as easily--and much less expensively--tackle the same type of project with old cabinets. Best of all, the only tools you'll need are a hammer, screwdriver, hand saw, drill and circular saw. To cut the plywood top, Tom suggests using a straightedge fence. I would suggest that you make and use this long saw guide or, if necessary, this shorter model.

In the same issue of the magazine, Norm Abram offers sound advice on reusing kitchen cabinets in the basement. Much of what he suggests would also apply for old cabinets you planned to relocate in the garage.

When I first heard the story about the "balloon boy" who had been found in a garage attic, my first reaction was, "sounds like a hoax." My second reaction was, "who has an attic in their garage?"

I'm pretty sure I was right on that first one. As for the second, I really don't even know how to find an answer. I know there must be plenty of garage attics out there, but I've never had one. Many attached garages either have rooms above them or are topped by an attic that spans the full house.

If you have empty space under the roof of your attic, though, it can be turned into a storage space relatively easily. First, however, you will need to get a qualified opinion on the structural strength of the joists, which are the framing members that span the tops of the garage walls and are parallel to the garage floor. Most often, these joists are not sized or spaced with the intention of supporting any floor weight. They might be trusses, which are manufactured roof-framing systems, or simply relatively small pieces of lumber spaced too far apart to provide an adequate flooring system.

Have a knowledgeable contractor take a look at the roof framing to determine if it is suitable for storage purposes. If it isn't, ask about the options for beefing up the joists. Sometimes that can be a low-cost upgrade. What you are looking for is a framing structure that will support the weight of some flooring, such as sheets of plywood, and whatever items you plan to store on that floor. These tips on assessing an attic for storage potential might also provide some help.

Just remember, if your kid disappears and you can't him or her anywhere else, take a look in the garage attic before calling for help.

According to the National Retail Federation, the average consumer will be spending $56.31 on Halloween this year. Seems like a lot of candy to me, but that number includes costumes, pumpkins and house decorations. Last year, the average expenditure was $66.54, so ongoing economic concerns are clearly having their impact even on dear old Halloween. They're even saying fewer people will be carving a pumpkin this year, and I'm guessing this means that there will be fewer porch lights on luring trick or treaters.

That's a pity. Kids love Halloween. Don't be a Scrooge. Let me repeat a suggestion I made last year at this time: Turn your garage into a Halloween hangout for the night. It's on a Saturday this year. What else are you doing that will be half as much fun? And you can do it all for less than you'd spend on dinner and a movie (though if you do go to the movie, I recommend Zombieland).

Open the door, hang up some sheets or blankets (or buy a roll of a vinyl scene setter with a Halloweenish theme), put on a CD with ghoulish sounds and dim the lights (or use a red light). Spend the evening in the garage with your bowl of candy and enjoy the pleasure that the neighborhood kids take in your unique holiday setting. You can probably make all of this happen without having to spend any more than the national average.

How much stuff do you have? Well, the only way you can really quantify that is to weigh everything. Not such an easy task, but it's exactly what a moving company does (or tries to do in an estimate) before telling you how much it will cost to haul your belongings from one house to the next.

The results can be shocking, as Scott Burns recently discovered. I have been enjoying Scott's articles on personal finance and money management for several years. But a recent piece, The Ka-ching Epiphany, (the title derives from a Shania Twain song on shopping as a way of life) is a real eye opener.

Scott and his wife are moving from New Mexico to central Texas. In the past they've always moved themselves, but this time around the task seemed too daunting. So they called in the professional movers. And the verdict was five tons. That's 10,000 pounds of stuff, from a household that, Scott writes, operated under "our illusion of living a simple lifestyle."

What I most enjoyed about the article was the experience the Burns' had once all of that stuff had been packed up. "We cooked, ate, slept, washed, changed clothes, talked on the phone, and read. We made margaritas. Life was completely normal, even though most of our 10,000 pounds of stuff was sealed in cardboard boxes." Even more, Scott confesses that if most of those boxes had simply disappeared, they would "not be missed."

Which brings me to one of the first answers I give when someone says they need more space: Are you sure? Maybe it's not more space you need, but rather better storage. And maybe it's not more storage you need, but less stuff. It's crazy to create storage units for stuff that you have no use for, and even crazier to pay to move stuff that you really don't need or want. When in doubt, throw it out. Or, even better, give it away.