Once a piece of the home that any deep thinker or inquisitive child will reach for at a moment’s notice, dictionaries have now joined the phone book as a large tome that sits in the corner and collects dust.
Some versions, bundled with a similar thesaurus, may hold sway above the other books on your shelf and look handsome, yet you probably aren’t reaching for one of these if you don’t know what a word means. With multiple definitions and uses one Google search away, if you’re moving and don’t want to haul another heavy book, this one is destined for the trash.
Calculator Days Gone By
From the abacus to the slide rule to the solar-powered calculator, people have been using math aids for millennia. Calculators used to be a mathematician's best friend, and if you took calculus in high school or college, you used a graphic calculator to get through tough problems.
But, again, with a smartphone in every pocket, needing to carry a calculator around has become pretty pointless. Even if your phone doesn't come with a calculator pre-packaged, there are plenty of free versions you can download. Drop this piece of tech on top of your alarm clock or film camera.
Good for Memories and Not Much Else
Most people have photo albums they've received from parents or grandparents, or even those they've made themselves. And if you have them, there's nothing like busting them out to talk about the old days. On the other hand, thanks to the lack of film printing, photo albums have become rare.
Digital photo albums are usually a better way to save your precious memories. If you're interested in going fully digital and don't want to dedicate space to bulky albums, there are plenty of places that will scan your pictures and create the albums for you in a snap.
Most Cans Don't Even Need an Opener Anymore
If you have a can opener in your home, you probably have a rechargeable device you can stick right on top of the can and let run while you work on another part of the meal. But, as most cans add pull-tabs or other options to get them open easier and faster – and without potentially dangerous sharp edges – can openers as a whole are seeing less and less use.
Manual hand openers — once one of the home's most-used tools — are probably doing little more than collecting dust. Doomsday preppers might keep using them to keep their skills fresh, but the regular citizen doesn't mind.
The Number of Things Smartphones can do is Growing
Alongside phone jacks, cubbies, and phone books, another thing that used to sit next to the phone in the home was a little book that held favorite contacts: friends, family members, frequent take-out places, and plenty more.
With enough space in your phone to hold millions of names and numbers, a little black book is yet another thing the smartphone industry has done away with. You'd have to update the book every time someone changed their address or phone number, and cell phones have made updating so much easier no one is mourning this loss.