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Let’s take a moment of silence for the junk drawer.
You know the one—that chaotic repository of AA batteries, tangled earbuds, instruction manuals for devices you no longer own, and at least three calculators that may or may not still work.
For those of us who came of age in the ’80s and ’90s, that drawer was basically a museum of our daily existence. Every single item in there once felt essential, maybe even cutting-edge.
Then came the smartphone. And suddenly, that drawer became a graveyard.
Some technology isn’t built to last forever. Other technology sticks around only until something better—or let’s be honest, something easier—comes along to replace it.
For our generation, the great technological purge happened faster than anyone could have predicted. One minute you’re carefully organizing your CD binder for a road trip. The next, you’re asking Siri to shuffle your playlist.
The turning point? That annoyingly catchy phrase: “There’s an app for that.”
Apple coined this marketing slogan in early 2009 to promote the App Store for the iPhone 3G, and they used it heavily in a series of commercials, such as this one. What started as an advertising campaign became a cultural catchphrase—and eventually, a eulogy for an entire generation of gadgets we once couldn’t live without.
So grab your reading glasses (because yes, we need those now), and let’s take a nostalgic stroll through these everyday items that once ruled our lives before there was, well, an app for that.
Calculators
Remember when you actually had to own a calculator? Not just any calculator—a specific one your math teacher required, like the TI-83 that cost more than your first car payment.
You carried it in your backpack, punched those satisfying rubber buttons, and maybe—if you were particularly clever—figured out how to spell “HELLO” upside down.
Now? Every smartphone comes with a calculator app built right into the phone. Your $1,200 phone replaced your $100 graphing calculator, and honestly, that math checks out.
Phone books and the Rolodex
There was something almost ritualistic about flipping through a Rolodex, those little cards spinning with a satisfying thwip-thwip-thwip until you found the right contact.
And phone books? They showed up on your doorstep whether you wanted them or not, thick as a brick, immediately becoming a booster seat or a doorstop.
Today, your Contacts app holds more information than a phone book ever could—complete with photos, email addresses, and that note you added reminding yourself that “Mike (work)” is the one who microwaves fish in the break room.
GPS devices
Raise your hand if you owned a Garmin or TomTom that suction-cupped to your windshield and spoke to you in a vaguely judgmental British accent.
Before those came along, of course, there was the Thomas Guide—that spiral-bound atlas of your city that required a PhD in cartography to navigate. Or MapQuest that required you to print out the directions before driving anywhere.
Google Maps and Apple Maps changed everything. Now we just argue with our phones instead of our passengers about whether to take the freeway or back roads.
CD and MP3 players
Oh, the CD player. The skip protection that never actually prevented skipping. The elaborate carrying cases with slots for 24 discs that you curated like a museum collection.
Then came the MP3 player era—the Rio, the Creative Zen, and of course, the iPod that made us all feel impossibly cool.
Remember burning CDs? The careful selection of tracks, the prayer that the burn wouldn’t fail at 98%, the Sharpie artwork on the disc itself?
Spotify, Apple Music, and streaming services made all of that obsolete. No more “mix CD for the car.” Now it’s just “hey, play my road trip playlist.”
Alarm clocks
The alarm clock sat on your nightstand like a loyal soldier. Its red digital numbers shone through the darkness. Some of us had the kind with the flip numbers. The fancy among us had clock radios that woke us to static-filled FM stations.
Now, our phones handle wake-up duty—complete with gentle chimes, sleep tracking, and the ability to set 47 different alarms labeled things like “NO SERIOUSLY GET UP” and “YOU’RE GOING TO BE LATE.”
Wired headphones
Those tangled white earbuds that came with every iPod. The over-ear headphones with the foam padding that disintegrated into orange crumbs. The careful coiling technique you developed to prevent knots (that never worked).
Bluetooth technology untethered us from our devices, and now AirPods fall out of ears everywhere while their owners pretend not to notice the $250 price tag.
Photo by KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images
Printers and fax machines
Okay, printers haven’t completely disappeared—but when’s the last time you actually needed one?
Cloud technology means documents live in the digital ether, accessible from anywhere. No more “PC LOAD LETTER” errors, no more buying ink cartridges that cost more than the printer itself and no more paper jams at the worst possible moment.
Your phone can now send documents directly to the cloud, and honestly, the planet thanks us for using less paper. And you don’t need a fax machine to send that document to your boss anymore.
Voice recorders
Journalists, students, and people who talked to themselves all relied on handheld voice recorders—those little devices with the micro-cassettes that captured everything from lecture notes to song ideas hummed in the car.
The Voice Memos app on your phone does the same thing now, minus the satisfying click of the record button and the panic of realizing you recorded over something important.
The answering machine
Beep. “Hi, you’ve reached the Johnsons. We can’t come to the phone right now…”
The answering machine was a household fixture, complete with the blinking red light that filled you with either anticipation or dread. Some of us had the kind with the mini cassette tapes; others graduated to digital.
Voicemail absorbed this function entirely, though let’s be honest—nobody listens to voicemails anymore anyway. We just text back “what’s up?”
Scrapbooks
Photographs used to be physical objects. You’d pick them up at the one-hour photo place, flip through them in the parking lot, and carefully arrange the good ones in albums with sticky pages and plastic overlays. Scrapbooking became an entire hobby industry.
Now, the Photos app stores tens of thousands of images we’ll never look at again, automatically sorted into albums with names like “Screenshots” and “Views From 2016.”
Flashlights
Every household had a flashlight—usually with dead batteries—for power outages and checking under the bed for monsters. And while those haven’t gone completely extinct, they only get used for emergencies.
Now, your phone’s flashlight app illuminates everything from restaurant menus to the path to the bathroom at 3 AM. It’s always charged (well, usually), always accessible, and never rolling around the back of a closet when you need it most.
Notebooks and Post-It notes
Spiral-bound, college-ruled, covered in doodles during boring meetings—the notebook was where ideas lived. Some people had fancy leather journals; others grabbed whatever was on sale at Office Depot.
The Notes app replaced this for many of us, syncing across devices and offering the ability to search for that one brilliant thought you had six months ago. Though there’s something to be said for the tactile satisfaction of pen on paper that no app has quite replicated.
Kitchen timers
That twisty dial timer shaped like a tomato or a chicken. The digital one that stuck to the fridge with a magnet. The one built into the microwave that you never figured out how to program.
Your phone’s Clock app now handles timing duties for everything from pasta to laundry to “how long until this meeting is over.” Multiple timers, labeled and running simultaneously—something that tomato timer could never do.
Some of these tech devices will live on forever
Here’s the thing about all this obsolete technology: we don’t really miss the inconvenience. Nobody longs for the days of MapQuest printouts or answering machine tapes that got eaten. But there’s something about the tactility of it all.
The weight of a Discman in your hands, the satisfaction of slamming down a phone receiver, the ritual of rewinding—that our sleek glass rectangles can’t quite replace.
So the next time you use your phone to calculate a tip, find directions, and set a timer all within 30 seconds, pour one out for the junk drawer. Those gadgets served us well.
And somewhere, a Thomas Guide is gathering dust in a garage, waiting for the day the satellites fail and we need it again.
