Kristan Higgins’ My One and Only is happily ensconced on the NYT and USA Today bestseller lists, and I have been offered a fun little collection to celebrate.
If you leave a comment and tell me the most essential item in your car’s glove compartment, you’re entered to win. Easy! And what could you win? A prize pack that includes a really cute travel bag, some travel essentials like lip gloss, mascara, and bronzer, and a copy of the book.
My glove compartment essentials are kinda boring: a mylar reflective heat blanket, bottles of water, hand wipes, about 14,000 pens that don’t work, and a really bad GPS. If you know which one is my car and want to steal it, go for it – it gives really crap directions, like getting off the highway and getting on one of those roads with stoplights and big box stores every 200 ft. I think it would take me to Manhattan by way of Texas if I allowed it. I do have a candy stash, though. No touching!
Standard disclaimers apply: I am not being compensated for this giveaway. Void where prohibited. Hang up and drive. Texting while operating a moving vehicle is punishable by a lot of hateration and some glaring, and possibly a heaping ticket if the cops spot you. No hateration in this dancery. You’ve got 24 hours. This contest is open to residents of the US and Canada.
So, what’s in your
wallet
glove compartment that absolutely must stay there? Got a dashboard mascot that is required in your car? Anyone have a mini-library in their car, too, or are you one of those people who can’t read in a moving vehicle?
I have a pet-hair removal brush, which I also call a fuzz- buster, but I don’t think it is the same thing as the previous poster meant. I can’t get the dog hair off of my clothes while still at home with the dog, I have to wait and do it when I get where I am going, so it lives in the glovebox. Actually, I usually have two, one of the scratchy ones and one of the tape-y ones.
Tissues!! My passengers are frequently sneezy.
1. The Bad Girl’s Guide to the Open Road
2. The Alaska Milepost
3. Bear spray
4. Mosquito repellent
5. Bungee cords of assorted sizes
I’ve got an emergency light that has saved my ass a time or two. It can hang like a lantern, or you can unscrew the top bit and use it as a flashlight. It also has a nifty hook that is just right for hanging it under the hood of my twenty-five-year-old truck that has broken down again. I also keep a four-cell Mag-light in the truck, but it’s too big to fit in the glove box. It’s comforting to know that I can use it to defend myself as well as finding my way in the dark. Come to think of it, I have a lot of flashlights!
That, and napkins (like everyone has said).
My glovebox is broken on one side (thank you wimpy little plastic hinges) so I don’t keep much in it. Insurance, manual – and the #1 most important thing to have in my case – the lovely little tool to disconect my battery cables.
They’re on the side – and a complete pain to deal with. But every few months my stero goes wonky and gives me a red ring of death. So I have to disconnect the battery to reset it. Have to have music. I turn into crazy cranky driver lady if I don’t have music.
Other items of import are kept in the center consol – the audio cable to hook up my Zune, and phone charger.
Everything else just lives on the floor in the back (various shoes, plastic bags, rain coat, window scrapper, spare tire)
I’m a public transport kind of girl, but the one thing I insist my roommate keep in her car glove box is a hand lotion/hand sanitizer from Bath and Bodyworks. The lotion keeps my hands soft but also clean—and it smells awesome too.
Appended:
6. Duct tape.
In my glove box the most important thing is the hefty leather work gloves. I live on the backside of nowhere and commute 75 miles through some of the most rural back country in Oregon. This often requires 4 wheel drive and my little pick up is old school, so that means I have to get out in all sorts of inclement conditions to “turn the hubs”! Keeps my hands clean and warm. Second would be my flashlight with stand cause changing a tire at 10pm on a dark back road with a pen light clenched in your teeth is no fun…believe me!
Sunglasses, proof of insurance, and maps and directions to back up the handheld GPS I keep in my purse. (I have NO sense of direction, and I get lost a lot. Like a LOT lot. Like my car ought to have a macro for U-turns lot.)
Honestly? It’s been a while since I’ve dared open the door. I know that I have insurance cards in there somewhere and maybe a user manual in case I need that pesky spare tire, but I rarely if ever go in there.
Boogie Wipes, an emery board, and Chapstik. If there is anything that happens that these three things cannot handle, I’m probably screwed anyway. (I do have a very tiny flashlight on my keychain, but I also have eleventy hundred other things, like a die from the Flamingo in Las Vegas and a laser pointer, but I keep them on my person and not in the glove box. I guess if I ever need to fend of a potential carjacker I can just whap them upside the head with my keys, which weigh about 7 pounds.)
Cash, folded up real small, for gas or tolls when we are really far away from the bank. But have I replenished this since the last emergency??? It was tucked in with the registration and insurance. There was that time in the mountains when the car overheated and we needed to get a snack and a drink while we waited for it to cool.
What I need is a mobile ATM in my glove compartment, then I would really have enough with me for any emergency without needing to have huge amounts of cash that could be stolen easily. (A magic mobile ATM.) Actually, I need one of these in my purse. And if I am going to have a magic mobile ATM, I want it to use Bill Gates bank account instead of mine, so it is extra magical.
I am amazed at all the people that keep actual STUFF in their glovebox. Besides a tire gauge, everything else is paper stuff- maps, registration, insurance, manual, extra envelopes for bank deposits. I think out of all of that stuff, it’s the extra envelopes, because my bank is often out of envelopes when I need them. I keep all the other essentials (extra pens, napkins, hand sanitizer, extra pair of sunglasses) in all the OTHER receptacles in my car- on the drivers’ door, in the center console, etc.
Insurance card
AAA numbers
tire gauge
Phone charger
Swiss Army Knife (real one with the logo and everything)
Napkins
I’m going to add duck tape and wet wipes.
The umbrella, scraper, and flashlight are under the seat.
Bon Jovi, the soundtrak to Forest Gump and The Big Chill, and Sunday School songs are in the door panel pocket. Never know what you’re going to need while crusing with the moon roof open.
My glove compartment is kind of boring (manual and registration/insurance information). All the interesting stuff is in the back with the spare tire (tools, jumper cables, blanket, etc).
I can barely shut my glove box, it’s so full. But the most important item would have to be my flashlight – everything else I’ve got doubles of in my purse. And I never go anywhere without my purse!
the most important and useful item in my glove box are zip ties ;D
but no seriously parts of my car are held on by zip ties and i need them in case one snaps while i’m on the go
spare change! Unexpected tolls are a serious mood-killer.
Bottle opener.
My mom and I figured out that on a long-a$$ roadtrip (like Ohio to Minnesota, ie my hometown to the state where I’m going to school), there is nothing nicer than hauling one’s bags into the hotel room, using the nice clean bathroom, and having a beer. (Just one. Maybe two.) It’s an antidote to all the diet coke one has inevitably been drinking during the day. HOWEVER: hotels don’t have bottle openers, and being clever and trying to use the doorjamb to wedge open a bottle just results in one smelling like one has rolled her way across the floor of a roadhouse. (Ask me how I know.)
My item is napkins/Kleenex. I always drink coffee in the morning and always manage to spill it when I’m on my way to something important. Also, my copy of “The Complete Wooster and Jeeves”, because I hate being stuck somewhere with nothing to read!
A flashlight that plugs into the spot for the cigarette lighter!
Tampons and a loaded .380.
Altoids for that curiously strong feeling.
I’ve got to go with my SheWee, which would be the best invention ever. It’s a funnel that lets you pee standing up like a boy, which while is lifesaver enough while camping or hiking, is amazing during roadtrips. (Works much better than that open the front door, open the back door, and squat between them method I used to have to do on the side of the road.)
I finally bought a little pair of scissors to keep in my glove box not long ago, after always needing them for some reason and never having them. I’ve used them several times since. 🙂
Okay, let’s see, just the glovebox?
-car stuff (insurance, manual, business cards, etc)
-tire pressure gauge
-pens
-napkins
-extra sunglasses
-a novel (usually romance or YA)
-mp3 player, currently loaded with audiobooks
It’s a toss up between the last three as to which is the most important. This is only one small hidey-hole in my car, though, so there’s a lot more that travels around with me on a regular basis.
My most essential glovebox item – bandaids. More specifically, Latex-free bandaids, because my son and I both have to use latex-free. You never know when you need a bandaid!
My little change purse for parking meters! Essential.
Ever since I triggered my car alarm at 7:00 on a Sunday morning causing faces and lights to appear at every window of every house on mine and several surrounding blocks, the vehicle manual is velcroed into the glove box. I didn’t know that car HAD an alarm, let alone how to turn it off.
Captcha say28. Yeah, my husband must have said 28 times, “Keep the^%$# manual in the glovebox.”
hmmm, my glove compartment also contains napkins, and dog treats. though i can’t live without my dashboard lizards and the Golden Snitch that hangs from my mirror.
I don’t have a car (or a glove compartment for that matter!) but the last time I drove, it was a friend’s car and I got pulled over. When opening up the glove compartment for papers, Midnight Oil’s Redneck Wonderland album fell out. This was the only thing there apart from the car’s papers so I guess it was essential!
The essential things on my glove compartment are: napkins, car registration/license and spare change.
I don’t currently have a car, but when I was a kid the most important thing in my mom’s glove compartment was one of those little collapsable/telescoping cups. It was used as a portable toilet in emergency situations…(ewwww!).
Baby wipes. I don’t go anywhere without baby wipes.
Extra straws from fast food restaurants, because about half the time we get takeout the kids working the drive through forget to put straws in the bag!
I’m with Michelle. I don’t keep much in my glove box because I can’t really reach in there while I’m driving. I forgot to add the digital tire gauge and the user manual, but my earlier list stands.
As for the rest of the car, well that’s a different story. Change lives in the depression in front of the gear shift. A Firewire/USB recharger lives in the cigarette lighter. The center console houses pen, paper, an I-Pass, the ubiquitous napkins, and an LED flashlight that is powered by a crank instead of batteries. (I live in the Land of Lincoln, so before the days of the I-Pass I used to get rid of my pennies in the toll booths. So, I still carry a few of those plastic film canisters with 40 pennies in each.)
A huge Mag-Lite to hit mashers and the accessory that is absolutely de rigeur for any self-respecting Midwestern car—the combination snow brush/ice scraper—both live under the passenger seat.
The battery cables are in the trunk. I really need to add matches, a candle, a fleece blanket and a folding snow shovel to the trunk before next winter. And duct tape and folding scissors are going in my center console right away. What a good idea!
I always keep hand sanitizer and kleenex in my glove box, since I’m a klutz and I live in Minnesota so I always have a runny nose in winter- which lasts forever here 🙁
I always keep a twenty dollar bill in the glovebox. Not because I’m likely to need it, but because my darling fiance always makes sure he has an “emergency twenty” in his glovebox before heading out any further than the corner store. Some kind of cash-money security blanket. Practical enough, I guess, but I keep one in mine not so much for unexpected situations but because whenever I see it while looking for back-up sunglasses I’m reminded of him.
I don’t have a car, so I hope this is a random choosing of the winner, not a cleverness contest! I do have a bike basket, which holds my bike lock and purse while I’m riding it, and nothing when I’m not.
Thanks for the giveaway! I love Kristin Higgins!
Diapers (assorted sizes) and maxipads (assorted absorbencies).