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.