Silverware and 4 Other Things I Keep in my Car
This post was originally published May 23, 2024.
After years of day trips around the state of Maine and beyond, it’s no surprise that I’ve accumulated a lot of things in my car. Still, I do my best to keep it tidy and clean. As the time for spring cleaning has officially come, I’m moving my snow brush to the trunk and picking up the empty bottles that reside on my backseat floor. However, the tidying process got me thinking about the things I intentionally keep in my car, and some of them have been absolute gamechangers for me.
1. Gardening gloves and knee pad
Like any responsible car owner, I have an emergency kit in case I break down on the side of the road. It includes equipment to change a tire, jump start a car, tow a car, and an emergency blanket if I get stranded in the snow. I also keep gardening gloves and a knee pad because opening the hot hood of a car that’s been running or kneeling on the tarmac for an extended period of time to fix a tire can get uncomfortable.
2. Cat Litter
I suppose I could use the plastic tub and cheap bag of cat litter as an emergency litter box when traveling with my cat, but that’s not the reason I have it. For me, it serves the same purpose as sand. When traveling through Maine in the winter, it’s inevitable that you’ll get stuck spinning your wheels on the ice. One time, I got stuck in the snow in the rural, service-less area of Northern Maine and had to wave down a truck for help. Never wanting to do that again, I keep a collapsible snow shovel and cat litter in the trunk to dig myself out of a slippery situation.
3. Mix Tapes
I keep my mix tapes in my center console. Not all of them, of course, as they wouldn’t all fit, but I occasionally cycle them in and out depending on my mood. Right now, I have some of the first ones I created, featuring a lot of songs from the 60s through the 80s, since I find a lot of those songs are perfect background music to a sunny drive. I mean, how perfect is it to drive down to the coast and hear “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles?
4. Tissues
I’ve got allergies, and there’s nothing worse than needing to blow my nose and not having a tissue. So I keep a box of tissues in my car’s passenger seat, which wasn’t getting used much the last few years anyway—a perfect representation for the COVID lockdown now that I think about it… I also keep a little trash bag on the floor of my passenger’s seat, so all the dirty tissues don’t just sit around. I’ve used the tissues as napkins when necessary, or a tool to wipe some dust that’s built up on my dashboard.
5. Silverware
This one might be the oddest, but I highly recommend that everyone keep a set of silverware in their car. I was given a reusable set of bamboo silverware at a conference I went to four years ago, and I thought to myself, when am I ever going to use this? I always used my regular silverware at home and packed it in my lunchbox if I needed it. But sometimes I’m on the road for a while, and I get hungry. Sometimes I want something other than a sandwich. Sometimes I want a pint of Ben and Jerry’s on a hot day or a salad that I didn’t have to prepare myself. In these situations, I’m saved by my reusable silverware. Maybe Joey Tribbiani from Friends was onto something when he carried a fork around in his pocket.
What do you keep in your car?