Its been on-and-off snowing here for the last week. And while I like having an open-top pickup truck for the ability to throw a shovel and other gear in the back, its kind of a pain in the butt to have to plunge your hand into a foot of snow to dig out the shovel or windshield snow broom when you need it.

Everyone I know has one of those combination ice scraper / snowbroom devices for clearing off your windshield. I keep mine in the bed of the truck because once you use it, its got ice and snow all over it and I’m not throwing it behind the seat of my truck for all that stuff to melt off and puddle in the cab of my truck.

Problem is, when I go out in the morning, the last thing I want to do is plunge my hand into a foot of snow to fish around for the damn thing. Now, I could simply tuck it behind the truck box in a vertical position…but that makes it an attractive target to the less-prepared in a snowy parking lot. What to do? Well, the obvious answer is to wear gloves. Thats true, but I still wind up with snow coating my arm up to my elbow. Gotta be another way.

I was pondering this one the other day and came to the conclusion that a refrigerator magnet and some paracord could fix this. I tied a fridge magnet to  4′ length of paracord and tied the other end to the snow/ice scraper. Now when I toss it in the back of the truck, I stick the magnet to the underside of the truck bed rail. High enough to be out of the snow, hidden enough to be out of sight, and most importantly I can just grab the cord and fish the thing outta the snow that way. Paracord for the win.