End Table

We’ve been using these 10 gallon Rubbermaid totes as end tables for a while, but it wasn’t worth mentioning on Five Gallon Ideas until recently, when we added an important new detail.

end table

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Lighting

bucket lightA bucket light makes an easy, durable camping lantern. That’s usually why they’re made. If you want to build a bucket light for camping, scroll down to the bottom of the page.

I use my bucket light for something completely different – photography. Good light for photography is highly dispersed, which means instead of tight and focused it’s wide and scattered. That’s why a cloudy day is better for taking photos than a sunny one.

So here’s my bucket light. It’s very easy to make, it just requires a bucket sized right to your lamp. In my case, my lamp fits best with the 3.5 gallon bucket pictured below.

bucket lamp 3 gallon bucket

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Bucket Wrench

sealed bucket lidIf you’ve ever spent several minutes wrestling with a well sealed snap lid you may have experienced what I call “bucket fingers.”

There’s actually a trick to opening a bucket lid. Pull out on the lip rather than up. But some lids are so stubborn that even this secret pro bucket-wrangler technique isn’t enough.

Prior to using a bucket wrench, I used to get such bad bucket fingers that for a while I’d lose the feeling in my finger tips!

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