In Organizing: Try "An Heir and a Spare"

Call it a cute quark of our relationship, but occasionally Drew and I like to come up with names for stuff. It can be a nickname for an actual object (like when we had a GPS and we named her Rosie) or a phrase like “I’m a slow waker-upper) which translates to mean, I’m not a morning person. We have one other phrase we love and use a lot and it is called “heir and a spare.” We co-opted this somewhat crude British colloquialism (that refers to the Queen giving birth to a second child to secure the royal succession) to mean: buy an extra, when you can.

And that is the relative part, right? When you can. Affordability and practicality definitely impact this idea. This suggestion applies more to groceries and household staples than more expensive things like computers or cars. Also to be considered is the utility of the item. For example, just because a blanket is on sale, doesn’t mean needing to buy two of them because ideally, just the one blanket should last a while.

In our home, “Heir and a spare” comes in the most handy for things like a jar of mayonnaise, a box of ziplock bags, or a tube of toothpaste. We tend to buy our paper products like toilet paper and paper towels in the largest single quantity available so we don’t buy two of those at a time, simply because we don’t have the room to store it all.

And that is another thing to be considered: storage space. As a de-clutter organizing advocate, I’m in no way encouraging filling up their homes with more stuff than it can handle. Everything should have a place to be stored that can be accessed easily and efficiently.

Where “heir and a spare” really lives up to its name is saving time, and maybe even some money. There is nothing worse than going to do a task and realizing there isn’t everything needed to complete it. Then what often happens is a hasty trip to the store, over-paying for something that isn’t exactly what is needed, just because there isn’t any better option.

I realize that trying to buy an extra of something is a privilege of choice. Not everyone can afford to buy extras. I remember many times in my own life where I could barely scrape together enough money to buy what I needed, yet alone the luxury of purchasing multiples.

With that said, as I’ve become more financially able, buying an spare extra of a household staple, has really helped me live a more organized, productive, and less stressful life. Sometimes I slip up and forget my own suggestion. And of course it’s always when I’m scraping down the bottom of an empty mayonnaise jar and I reach for a new one that’s not in the pantry. I groan and remember why I always try to keep an extra spare—to my heir— in the pantry.