The other day my partner and I were wandering around the city. We headed toward the grocery store and she asked if I would mind doing the shopping while she wandered into some of the other stores.
When we met back up, she was carrying a curtain rod and a curtain pull from the housewares store.
“These were on sale!” I was carrying two bags of groceries and hadn’t been thinking about sex or kink or toys, and I knew we didn’t need curtain rods. She gave me that amused little look when I said, “what are those for?”
“Whack, whack,” she replied.
Oh. I get it.
“The curtain pull has a great little metal knob at the end for a handle, and a finished tip — I just need to remove the ring. And the curtain rod pulls apart so I’ll have two canes of different widths, both with a handle.” Quite clever, I thought.
We call making kink toys “arts and crafts time” and we do it fairly often. On our first date we went looking for a hardware store, but they were all closed. The next morning (it was a great first date; maybe I’ll write about it here someday) we had breakfast then went to the hardware store and bought rubber straps and various other items we would soon use for kink play.
The rubber straps are wicked good for both impact play and for tying each other down to things.
There are lots of simple objects that make good kink toys. I think of “kink toys” as things that can be used for sensation play like spanking, paddling or caning — external toys that add impact or sensations to sexual play. I think of “sex toys” as thing that are used on the genitals or for putting inside people — internal or genital toys. I tend to buy professionally made sex toys for penetrative play, and use common hardware store type objects only externally (there are some exceptions, but that’s a different story and not for general play). I am very careful about physical safety, and that’s really important to me.
One of the easiest things to use for sexual sensation play is clothes pins. Seriously; clip them on to skin or nipples and it can add a whole different level of feeling. And you can buy them at the grocery story. Cleaning items like small plastic brushes can find creative uses. There’s all kinds of stuff that can be used for kink play or sex play. I find it really fun to think outside the box, so to speak.
Back to the hardware store, threaded metal rods, plastic tubes, plumbing parts, rubber items of all sorts (I really love rubber), trowels, tools, knife blades, garage door springs and a gazillion other items can be used for creative play. Rubber coating products make it easy to add a handle to a metal rod or wooden dowel. The ideas are fairly limitless. We’re even working on making our own floggers out of hardware store finds.
