Basically, I was talking with a player who's new to roleplaying, and one of the things that he brought up is that he was having some trouble with character creation with regards to equipment. Essentially a lot of things to keep track of, and in addition to that, keeping track of silver and copper. So what I offered him was an idea I'd thought about, but never got around to implementing until now:
Essentially, my thought is to offer a kit (15 gp is what I set it, but I don't know if that's the right price) which doesn't actually codify what's in it, but instead allows the player to assume that he has anything a reasonable adventurer would have at minimum. Essentially, if it's common enough among adventurers and cheap enough (a couple sp max), the player could just assume they have it. There would be exceptions for stuff like rope or flint and steel, which are more pricey than what I'd allow based on the above assumptions, but they're so common that they can be assumed to possess them.
Essentially, this makes it less headache inducing for players that don't want to worry about overlooking something, or for players who don't care about equipment micromanagement, and also encourages clever problem solving (Essentially the whole "say yes to the players" thing. If they think up a clever plan, they should be rewarded for the thinking, not punished for not having the foresight to buy some cheap item that makes the plan work). I don't see it being overpowered, since it's basically a toolbox, not a fully built solution. Because it only includes cheap, basic items, it'll rarely just hand them the answer, pre built, to the problem at hand, but it will give them more resources with which to come up with solutions.
The downside, I can see, is that the definition of "common" adventuring items is a bit subjective. If the DM is used to more story-driven, urban campaigns, they'll have a different idea what's common than that of a player who's used to dungeon crawls. This ambiguity could be problematic if the PC decides they have a plan, then the DM says "Nope, that's too niche, so you probably wouldn't have that item in your pack" and the PC responds that they would have bought the item anyway, if they knew it wasn't common enough. Very similar to the problems with alignment in that way; since people won't be on the same page about it, whenever a borderline case comes into play, it'll feel very ambiguous, especially in contrast the the rest of the game's codified rules and definitions.
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Ultimate Equipment has 'kits' for each class that saves players the nuisance of purchasing each of these indispensable items individually.
It also occurs to me that there was a feat in 3.5 (I'm pretty sure, though perhaps it was a racial or class ability) that allowed a character to have an item she hadn't declared beforehand. There was a limit on the value and probably the times per day. Perhaps another forum member can recall the name.
I like the idea. Sort of like the UE kits mentioned above, but abstracted out to be equivalent to spell components.
I think the fact that it's 3x the price of a spell component pouch means that allowing items up to at least 1 gold should be acceptable. Just any small, easily carried item up to 1 gold can be pulled from this kit.
Chalk, string, twine, bobby pins, nails, etc.
As for the whole "Why would they have it?" bit, and I admit I'm kind of projecting my own odd experience as a kind of norm, I pick up random stuff like that all the time and stuff it into any spare pockets I have. At one point my jacket had something like 10 rubberbands, a metal ring about 7 inches in diameter, paper clips, magnets, a bouncy ball, a rubber mallet, a flash drive, a spool of thread, a couple of nails, 5 dice (6 sided. I lost one.), a pack of cards, a sharp piece off the back of a chair, and all of my school supplies I could fit in there (pencils, pens, erasers, etc.). Among other things.
So it's not TOO farfetched to say they just kinda picked it up somewhere really. Though I was always called out as an odd duck for having all this stuff. Right up until someone needed some of it.
Also, I'm pretty sure there's a Halfling racial Feat that allows something similar (up to 15 gold I believe), that lets him spend 15 gold and pull out anything that could be fit in his backpack up to that limit (hammers, crowbars, etc.) anyway.
Ah, found it. Well-Prepared.
Never seen it as worth a Feat but might be worth looking into converting into a Trait at the very least for your player?