I’ve forgotten 5 things about since getting a smartphone

Home Phone

Can you remember the horror of the home phone? Do you remember hanging around it just waiting for that certain someone to call? If you were like me, it actually doubled as two things: a way to get in touch with other people and the dreaded way to connect to the Internet. If you were among the lucky families, you had a separate line dedicated exclusively to this, but you most likely weren’t. Well, ever since getting a smartphone, I’ve ditched the home phone and haven’t looked back (other than getting dirty looks when people ask for my home line and I just give them my cell number…) Thankfully, the number of people ditching the home line has been steadily increasing year after year.

Alarm Clock

This was the bane of my existence through my teenage years. Forgetting to set my alarm clock was the cause of me being late for a countless number of morning classes (or in the rarer case, missing all together). If the power went out sometime during the night, which was common in my neighborhood, not only would the alarm clock reset completely…but the clock would be off by hours. Nothing like sleepily looking at the clock and thinking that you have plenty of time and then panicking when you realize it’s actually 5 hours past the time you think it is.

Calendar

Growing up, the calendar that was posted to our fridge was something our family lived and died by. Whether it be to inform everyone of a special school event during a particular night of the week or to make sure everyone remember that our aunt’s birthday was coming up on Saturday, it was the one universal piece of information that we used as our daily Bible.

And to tell you the truth, I’m not quite sure when the last time I actually used a calendar was. Everything seems to have blurred together, but the moment when I started being able to use my smartphone to mark events and reminders and then have them auto-sync across multiple platforms….it was all I needed.

The only downfall, I really have no excuse for missing anything nowadays. The excuse of “Oh, it must have completely slipped my mind” can’t really be counted on when I have five different reminders across my PC and smartphone reminding me that it was my turn to take the dog to the groomer.

Calculator

I think most people can relate with having to own a T1-83 Calculator in High School. These calculators were ubiquitous with math classes everywhere and were often a requirement and not a suggestion. Also, as I had to look them up for this article, how has the price of this calculator not gone down AT ALL in the past 15 years?

Anyway, yeah, I carried this bad boy around me all the time during high school and during the first few years of University, because you never knew exactly what kind of calculations you might be required to do on the fly. Thankfully, now most smartphones come equipped with a standard calculator that is more powerful (…and usually smaller) than this ancient beast. If not, I know at least a quick search of the Google Play Store brought up a ton of options.

Cookbook

Do have a shelf filled with cookbooks? I know I have Julia Child’s book somewhere that I received from my parents the day I moved out and at one point in time, it was my go to piece of information if I wanted to try something other than Kraft Dinner each and every night. However, I knew that there were websites online that provided this type of information around the time I was still collecting cookbooks, but I never really had the ease of accessing that type of information in the kitchen before getting a smartphone and tablet.

And now, all I do is fire up any of the multiple cooking apps or websites I have saved and it’s time to cook. Best of all? I can customize making a meal based on what I actually have in my fridge and pantry.