Free English Class! Topic: Everyday Items! 🧾🔑🌡️ (Lesson Only)

Well hello and welcome to this English lesson where I'm going

to talk about everyday things. Things that you just see as you

go through your day. I designed this lesson because I was

keeping track throughout the week. Everyday as I went

through my day I would add a few more things to my list. Um

and then my list got bigger and bigger. It's not super large.

But I just made a list of all of the little things that I use

throughout the day. And specifically things where I

thought do people know what this is called in English? Do

people know how to talk about this thing in English? So this

lesson is about everyday items. Some of them are household

items. Some of them are things you would see as you go through

your day. Maybe at work or while you're shopping. But

we're going to talk about things that you see everyday

and then I'll teach you some phrases in English about how to

use them. The first item is something that we call tweezers

let me say that again for you tweezers let me make this slide

a bit bigger tweezers are something that you use when you

get a sliver especially sometimes when you work with

wood if any of you have built something out of wood or if you

move something made out of wood sometimes you get a little

sliver in your finger and then you get tweezers and you use

the tweezers to pull out the sliver sometimes when you get a

sliver it can be annoying because you don't know which

way the sliver went in and you don't know how to pull it out I

do not get slivers while I'm teaching. So I don't use

tweezers very often. But the other day I was outside helping

Jen and I got a sliver actually in the finger I keep pointing

to. And so when I came in the house I said I went to the

drawer in the bathroom where we keep the tweezers and they

weren't there. And I said where are the tweezers? I have a

sliver. I need to pull out my sliver. So the first everyday

item maybe not everyday but Definitely an item I used

recently is tweezers. We might call these a pair of tweezers.

The same way we use pair to talk about scissors. Um even

though there's only really one of them because there's two

sides. Uh we might say pair of tweezers. But I normally just

say the tweezers. And then the image I showed you at the

beginning is called a clothespin. So when you wash

your clothes there are two things you can do with your

clothes afterwards. You can put them in a dryer and then it

uses or natural gas to heat your clothes and dry them. But

we hang our clothes on a clothesline and we put

clothespins on them. So the clothespin holds the clothes

that need to be dried on the clothesline. But we also use

this for something else. Which is why it's on the everyday

items list. When we eat chips when we open a bag of chips

what you might call crisps if you're learning British

English. When we eat half a bag of chips we roll up the top and

we put a clothespin on to hold the bag shut. So not only are

closed pins used to hang up clothes we also use them in our

kitchen to close open bags of chips so that they stay fresh

I'm sure everyone has done that before notice this word looks

difficult to pronounce but it's not too bad it's close pin. So

you don't have to say the TH as a the sound. It's just close

pin. And we use it to close things. Which has the same

pronunciation. Um I do not use one of these this is not one of

my everyday items. I do not smoke. I do not light a

cigarette everyday. I don't. But we do sometimes have a

campfire. And when we have a campfire I get some pieces of

wood. And I stack the wood up and I put some papers

underneath. I actually like to use a cardboard pizza boxes

when I start a fire. And then I use the lighter. So I you kind

of flick the lighter to make a flame come out. And then I use

the lighter to light the fire. Some people carry a lighter

with them everyday because they are smokers. Smokers often will

have a lighter with them. But we always have a lighter in our

house because we do like to have a campfire every once in a

while. And so then we we use the lighter to light it. And I

do have a big lighter. So thank you to all of you from France

for making good pens and good lighters. And if you don't have

a lighter you'll use matches. Um this is a box of matches.

You can also have matches in a what's called a book of matches

where you flip up the front and you can pull a match out. We do

not have matches in our house. Mostly we don't have matches

because matches are dangerous to have around when you have

children. Our children are older now. But matches can be

dangerous. What you do with a match is you take a match out

and you strike the match. There's usually a spot where

you can you strike the match against and then it lights. Um

when you have a book of matches there's a little black strip

and you strike it. But you can also get matches that are

called strike anywhere matches. Where you can even light them

you know just on a rock or on a brick. But yes we do not keep

matches in our house. Um because it's too easy for kids

to play with matches and accidentally start fires. Um

I've used these recently. I just used these earlier this

week. We would call this a nail clipper or we would call these

nail clippers. Similar to how we use when we say scissors we

always add an S. You can also add an S when you talk about

nail clippers. These are what you use when your nails are too

long and you need to trim your nails or clip your nails. So I

like to keep my nails nice and short. Jen actually keeps her

nails a little bit longer. Um so Sometimes women have longer

nails than men and sometimes they put nail polish on. Jen

actually keeps her nails a little longer because it it

helps her when she works with the flowers. She can use her

nail to kind of cut the stems and things like that. Um or

trim things. So but I keep mine nice and short and trim. Um and

I use nail clippers to do that. Um these are another thing that

sometimes go missing in our house. And we also have a

bigger pair which we call toe nail clippers. So we have nail

clippers that we use for our finger and then we have a

bigger pair that you can use to trim the nails on your toes.

Toenail clippers. These are really handy. Um we call them

either rubber bands or elastic bands in Canada. I think in

most parts of the world they're called rubber bands. Um we use

these for all kinds of things. When we make a bouquet of

flowers we put a rubber band on the bottom to hold all the

stems together. Sometimes we have something in the kitchen

as well that we want to close after we open it and we'll put

a rubber band around it to hold it close. Sometimes in school

kids will they'll shoot rubber bands at each other if students

find rubber bands on the floor of the classroom. You can be

sure that a rubber band is going to be shot somewhere. But

a rubber band or elastic band is very stretchy. Um and it has

many many uses. It's one of those really handy things in

life. That you could use for almost anything. So again I'm

not sure which phrase is the Canadian phrase. We call them

rubber bands and elastic bands. Uh maybe if Brett's still here

or if Rod the English teacher's still here. They can let us

know what they call them. What the most common name is. I use

both. You know are there any elastic bands here? Does has

anyone seen any rubber bands? I need a rubber band. I And then

we have of course the twist tie. Whenever you buy something

like when I bought these headphones they came all folded

up and then there was a twist tie around it. A twist tie is a

small piece of wire with paper around it or plastic. And it's

used to kind of hold things together. Um the other day I

opened up a a box at school and it had a new little webcam for

my classroom. And then the wire from the webcam had a twist tie

around it. When they put it in the they put all the wires

together and to keep them tidy they put a twist tie around it.

So twist ties we usually keep our twist ties because

sometimes we use them to reclose things as well in the

kitchen. But now we have a drawer that has way too many

twist ties in it. So you can see already from this lesson

that this is a lesson of very random items that Bob the

Canadian saw through his week and wrote down on his list

because the next one is what we call a bread tie. In Canada

when you buy bread there's this little plastic thing on the end

of the bread. And it almost always has the best before date

or the expiry date on it. So it tells you how long the bread

will be good for. Uh usually the bread's good for a week or

so. Um you can see that this twist tie says best before

October 2nd. So if I bought this bread on September 29th it

would be good till October 2nd it would probably be okay on

October 4th By the fifth or sixth the bread might be

starting to go moldy. But bread ties are what holds the end of

the bread bag closed. You can also shoot these by the way.

You can break them in half and you can put it on the end of

your finger and you can shoot it at people. Don't I don't

recommend that though it's dangerous. But when I was a kid

we did that quite often. So speaking of keys keys are

usually attached to a key chain. I don't think my keys

are close by. No. Uh sometimes have a key for your car, a key

for your house or apartment, maybe a key for work, and you

want to keep them all together. So you would put them on a

keychain. A keychain is actually a popular thing for

businesses to hand out in Canada. So sometimes when you

buy things from certain businesses they might give you

a keychain so that you always remember them. So I have a

keychain from the store where I buy feed for our animals. I

have a keychain from the hardware store in our local

town. Um I don't use them all and some people collect

keychains actually. It can be a fun thing to collect. But

usually at a certain point in your life you have too many

keys so you put them all together. I remember when I was

younger I had one key and then eventually I had two keys so I

got a keychain. I used coat hangers to hang up my shirts.

After I washed my shirts and after I hang them up on the

clothesline and use clothespins to hold them there Once they

are dry I usually put them on coat hangers. So even though

it's a shirt we still use the word coat hanger to talk about

this. So I put my shirts on coat hangers I usually kind of

flatten them a bit and I hang them in my closet. Um and then

when I go to wear my shirts they're nice and they're flat

and wrinkle free. So a coat hanger is something to use to

hang up a coat or to hang up a shirt. And if you use the bar

on the bottom I even use coat hangers to hang up my pants. So

that is a coat hanger pretty useful everyday item and my

jacket is actually always on a coat hook it's over there you

can't see it but when I come home from work I hang up my

winter coat or I hang up my jacket on a coat hook these are

probably the most common type of coat hook in North America

you can buy them at any hardware store they are very

handy they are nice and rounded on the top so it's really easy

to hang your coat on a coat hook or to hang your jacket on

a coat hook I don't usually put my coat on a coat hanger but I

could do that as well. It just happens to be that I have coat

hooks in my studio or office here. So I usually just hang my

coat on a coat hook. It's a little bit easier to do that

way. This is something that I saw this week that is not very

common in my house or at the place where I work. But it is

an ashtray. When you see an ash in North America. It's kind of

an old thing that people don't have a lot of anymore. Because

in Canada you can't smoke inside of restaurants. You

can't smoke inside the mall. You can't smoke in the library.

You can't smoke in buildings in Canada. A long time ago you

used to be able to smoke in buildings. Um like 20 years ago

or more. And so you would see ashtrays everywhere that people

would use if they were When I was a kid my uncles were

smokers. So when my parents had a birthday party we even though

my parents didn't smoke we would put ashtrays out for my

uncles so that they could flick their cigarettes and then butt

out their cigarettes in the ashtray. Um when you have

something to drink. And when you set it down on a coffee

table or on a a table often you will put a coaster under it.

You will usually Do this if you're putting it onto a really

nice table. When I sit at my desk here and I have my giant

mug that says gulp on it by the way with some tea in it. I

don't set it down on a coaster. But a coaster is a small round

piece of wood or cloth or other material that you put down

before you put a hot drink or even a cold drink in the summer

cold drinks. Sometimes there's a lot of moisture on the

outside. So you put a coaster down to protect the surface. Um

we have a set of coasters that we use for our coffee table.

And if we're drinking something hot we might use a coaster on

our kitchen table as well. Usually on nice wooden surfaces

you want to put a coaster down so that things are fine. I see

mode saying there was a bit of a hiccup. Now it's fine. Yeah I

just had a really quick air and then things were good again. So

I'll just keep going. Um so we have things called pot holders.

But we use these for two different things. You can use

them to grab a hot pot. Although I usually choose to

use an oven mitt for that. There's something called an

oven mitt. We use our pot holders to put on our table

when we put a hot pot or pan of food on the table. So these are

things that protect the surface of your table from something

hot. So often when we serve dinner we'll put some pot

holders out on the table. Some people also call them hot pads.

Um I think there might be another name as well. Um what

do we yeah we do call them pot holders. Even though we don't

hold the pot with it. I guess the pot sit on it so that makes

some sense. So we will put these out on the table in order

to protect the surface of the table. And then there's

something called an air freshener. I do not use air

fresheners. But the most common kind of air freshener for a car

is a pine scented air freshener. This is something

that you hang in your car and it emits a pleasant smell. I

actually don't like the smell of air fresheners but many

people have an air freshener in their car hanging from the rear

view mirror. So they'll go to the store and they'll buy a

pine scented air freshener and they'll hang it from their rear

view mirror and it will make their car smell nice. People

sometimes use air fresheners in their house as well. That one

looks a little different. The ones people use in North

America actually plug into the wall. Then it heats up kind of

a pleasant smelling yeah I'm I'm not sure what the word

would be. But it makes your house smell a little nicer. I

actually don't like air fresheners though. I just like

to have a really clean house that smells just has normal

smells like bread baking in the oven and those kinds of things.

But people sometimes like to put up air fresheners. So I end

up with a few of these through my week. Another everyday item

would be a receipt. Whenever you buy something you get a

little piece of paper saying that you buy it. This is not my

receipt from Whitecastle. I've only been to Whitecastle once.

They that restaurant doesn't exist in Canada only in the US.

But when you buy something if I go to Tim Hortons one of our

local coffee shops I get a receipt. When I go to the

grocery store when I'm done buying stuff they give me a

receipt. And then you can check your receipt to make sure you

were charged the right amount. And on the receipt there's a

list of everything you bought and the price that you paid for

it. Um so definitely I end up with a few of these everyday

items. As I go through my day and my week I think I go to the

grocery store about twice a week. Um I go to the coffee

shop about twice a month. Um but somehow as you go through

life you tend to have a few of these. Mine always end up in my

wallet as I go through my week. So another thing that is

definitely an everyday item in most people's houses is your

remote control. Um you can't really use your television

without having a remote control now. In my classroom I have a

remote control for my projector as well. And I have a remote

control for the sound system in the classroom. Um so as I go

through my day I use remote controls at work. And then I

use a remote control at night when I sit down to watch the

news or to do something else. So definitely remote control

are a very common thing for people to see as they go

through everything that they do in a day. So sometimes at work

I have to go to the bathroom or to the washroom. And when I'm

done I wash my hands and then from the paper towel dispenser

I get a paper towel to dry my hands off. So I use the

washroom or I use the bathroom. When I'm done I wash my hands

in the sink and then I grab a paper towel or two from the

paper towel dispenser and I use it to dry my hands off. This is

something that I did regularly before the pandemic. But now I

seem to be washing my hands a lot more often. Not just after

I use the washroom. I wash my hands at school before I eat

lunch. I wash my hands after every class. So I'm often

drying my hands with a paper towel that I grab from the

paper towel dispenser. A very common activity I think. I

think the amount of hand washing in the world has gone

way up in the last two years or year and a half. So this is

something I don't use very often anymore. And it's called

a postage stamp. But every once in a while I do need to mail

something and so I do have stamps in the house. Canada did

something really nice. Our postage stamps do not they

don't have a price on them anymore. So it just says pee in

the Canada flag. It used to be 43 cents for a stamp and then

47 cents for a stamp and I don't remember the prices. But

the price kept going up every year. So finally Canada just

decided that stamps have no you pay a price at the stamp at the

post office. But the stamp it's is good forever. So it doesn't

matter if the cost of a stamp goes up. It's always good. So

not necessarily an everyday item but I do use stamps once a

month or so. This is something that we use a lot more in the

winter than in the summer. A thermostat in the morning I

look at the thermostat to see how cold the house is because

our furnace is off right now. And then sometimes I turn the

furnace on using the thermostat because it's starting to get a

little chilly outside. So the thermostat is definitely

something that it controls your heating by the way and cooling

in the summer. At school students our thermostats are

actually locked inside of glass boxes because otherwise

students try to change the temperature in the classroom.

Recently there have been a couple of Covid cases in my

community I would say. And so a thermometer is something that

people have been using more lately. Because if you all of a

sudden don't feel well you want to check if you have a fever.

So you would use a thermometer a digital thermometer. You

might have one that just goes in your ear. You might have one

that you just point at your forehead. Or you might have one

like this that you put in your mouth or under your armpit in

order to your temperature. Um but definitely recently a few

people I know have checked their temperature and gotten

COVID tests because well we're still in a pandemic right? So

when you feel a little bit hot you want to use a thermometer

to check your temperature. Change. I even have change

right here. We don't use a lot of actual money in Canada. But

I still end up with lots of change. We also call this loose

change. Um the reason I say that is because we usually pay

with our phone or with our bank card. We don't often use money

anymore. When I go to the grocery store I pay with my

bank card. But I still sometimes buy things using

cash. Like using actual bills. And then I end up lots of

change. Um sometimes there's enough change on my desk that I

gather it all up and I take it to school and I can use it to

buy lunch at the cafeteria. Sometimes there's enough there

for me to do that. This is something that has become a lot

more common for us since the pandemic started. And that's

packages. Um usually from Amazon. I don't know where you

buy most of your stuff online. But in North America it's quite

common for me to get an email saying your package has been

delivered. And when I come home there's one of these brown

boxes with the Amazon logo on it saying that that this

package came from Amazon. We also use the word box. So you

might say yeah a few boxes came for you today or a couple

packages came for you today. But definitely a lot more

common since the pandemic has started. I usually have a

flashlight somewhere just in case we have a power outage.

It's nice to have a flashlight ready to go. Um the power

doesn't go out in Canada very often. But when we have really

bad storms. And in the winter sometimes when we have ice

storms it's nice to have a flashlight just in case the

power goes out. I've been reading actual books lately

instead of on my Kindle. So instead of e-books I've been

getting books from the library. And so I also usually have a

bookmark somewhere. So that when I'm done reading I can put

that in the book. Um so I read at night for a little bit and

when I'm done reading I put my bookmark in. So that I know

where I left off. That's an interesting English phrase

isn't it? Um it lets it helps me remember where I left off in

the book. We have what are called fridge magnets. Fridge

magnets come from all different places. As you know a magnet is

something that sticks to metal. Okay it has a north and South

Pole and it will stick to anything metal. We use fridge

magnets to put things on our fridge. So sometimes one of our

kids will come home and they'll have something from school like

they got a really good grade on a test. We might use a fridge

magnet to attach that to our fridge. Um and then it's just

something that you use to hang things on your fridge for a

little bit. Because I'm old every night I have to take a

pill because I had surgery. I'm on one type of medication. So

this is an everyday item for me. Everyday at around 9 PM I

take my one pill. Um it's a pill that keeps my heart rate

relatively low. I don't know what exactly it does. Should

probably ask my doctor. But anyways for some people this is

an everyday item. They need to take a pill every once in a

while. Um I use extension cords in the house and on the farm.

Whenever you want to plug something in. And if the

electrical outlet if the outlet is too far away you find an

extension cord and you use the extension cord to connect

whatever you're trying to plug in. Thankfully nowadays a lot

of things run off batteries and the batteries last a long time.

But there still are times when you need to find an extension

cord in order to plug something in. And then this is an

everyday item. There's hand sanitizer in my van. The

entrance to the school. In my classroom. In the staff room.

There is hand sanitizer everywhere in the world right

now. When you walk out of the grocery store when you walk

into the grocery store. Everywhere you go you will find

hand sanitizer. Um it is probably the most common

everyday item right now in the world. I think I've seen hand

sanitizer. I probably see hand sanitizer 10 times a day and

use it 10 times a day. So definitely very very common.

And as well of course the mask. I at school am required to wear

the blue I guess medical grade disposable mask. Canada still

has a mask mandate. At least the province of Ontario does.

We have been wearing masks since the spring of 2020. so

this is not new for me. Um but I can't wear a cloth mask or a

homemade mask at work. I must wear of the blue masks at work

that is required. Um sometimes people with long hair girls

especially women and girls will use bobby pins in order to hold

their hair up. I find these in my house in all kinds of places

because Jen and the girls my girls sometimes use bobby pins

in their hair. It's a small metal pin that you can use like

if you've I don't really know a lot about it. But if you have

long hair and you want to hold it back you can put bobby pins

in to kind of hold it nicely against your head. Um they are

they're everywhere in my house. By giving away too much

information. There tends to be bobby pins in a lot of funny

places in my house. So I think that's just what happens when

you're married to someone who uses them and when you have two

daughters. And my name's Bob. So I don't know why the pin is

named a bobby pin. A hair clip is something else that women

will use to hold up their hair if they have long hair. It's

usually spring loaded. When something's spring loaded like

a hair clip when you open it the spring makes it go back

together. So there's a spring inside that makes it go back

together. So we would say it's spring loaded. And then of

course a lot of us have phones and on the outside of our phone

we have a phone case. Um recently someone in my family

bought a new phone. And so I recommended that they right

away buy a phone case to protect their phone. It doesn't

necessarily prevent dam to the phone if you drop it on a hard

surface but it's at least a little bit of protection just

in case you do drop your phone or if it gets knocked out of

your hands by someone and it falls on a hard floor. This is

something I use a lot in the spring and in the summer and in

the fall. Uh sometimes we have a lot of flies in our house. I

don't know how they get in because we do have air

conditioning. So all the windows are usually closed. But

somehow flies get in and I need to use a fly swatter to kill

them. It's very annoying when you have a lot of fly flies in

your house. Um and you have to constantly use the fly swatter

to swat them. So that's the verb you use. When you have a

fly swatter you use it to swat flies. This is something I use

as a teacher that you maybe don't use a lot when I look at

student work when students give me their assignments. I use a

red pen in order to grade the assignment. So definitely

something that is an everyday item for me but maybe not for

all of you. And then glasses I I wear reading glasses in

particular. Glasses and contacts are everyday items for

some people. I don't wear contacts. But I do wear reading

glasses when I need to read. So when I need to read it's a lot

clearer for me if I put on my reading glasses. It helps my

eyes focus clearly on what I'm reading. Some people in my

family wear contacts. So that is definitely everyday item for

them to put contacts on in order to be able to see well as

they go through their day. And then earbuds. I don't always

have earbuds in my ears but I almost always have earbuds with

me. I have three pairs of these. Uh one for my home

computer. One for my work computer and then I always keep

a pair with my phone just in case I want to listen to

something privately. So earbuds of course go in your ears and

they allow you to listen to music or podcasts or even watch

Netflix or other shows on your phone or on your computer. And

then the sunglasses which you wear when it's really sunny

outside. And then lastly I'm still kind of old fashioned. I

still have a calculator on my desk here. And I have a

calculator at school. I know that you can use an app on your

phone in order to do calculations. In order to do to

solve like if you want to add something up or multiply two

numbers together. But I still like having a regular old

calculator. Especially when I'm you know calculating grades for

students or something like that. It's very very very very

handy to have a calculator around.