One of the things I eventually realized, many years ago, as I was on this seemingly endless quest to find the “perfect” daily driver, was that I had a lot of phones. Phones that I didn’t think were good enough, or phones that, while they were perfectly fine at the time, eventually —inexorably— got replaced with something new and, ultimately, better.

I used to hear people talk about “drawers of phones,” or the “tech drawer,” where the gadgets of yesteryear eventually found their quiet place. My dad had one of these when I was a kid, but that thing was filled with calculators and random things like that. These days the tech drawer is full of smartphones and tablets, eReaders, and whatever else.

And it’s not like I wasn’t selling most of those phones, too. But sometimes some phones and other devices just slip through the cracks, so instead of getting something back that can be used towards the purchase of a new phone, they just show up unexpectedly at some point in the future.

So it’s a bit strange that now, all these years later, I only have one phone for the first time that I can remember.

I eventually got rid of my own tech drawer, and I eventually rid myself of a bunch of phones that I knew I’d never use again. But, a couple of years ago, I had this idea that a backup phone wouldn’t be a bad idea at all. Something cheap, picked up from my carrier’s prepaid options, and used only in the case of an emergency.

That actually worked to my favor just a few months after I made the decision to do that, because I dropped my iPhone and, for the first time ever, shattered the screen. I knew it was going to take me a few days, maybe even a week, before I would have a chance to get it fixed, so I turned to the backup phone.

And it worked out well enough. Sure, I had to switch away from things like iMessage, but the transition wasn’t too bad (thankfully).

Sometimes crazy things can happen and we can break our phone, leaving us without an immediate replacement, and I was in that situation when I broke my daily driver. Having that backup phone was a great decision, and the longer I go without one now, the more careful I am with my phone. Still, I need to get a backup soon.

What about you? Do you have a backup phone just in case something disastrous happens to your daily driver? Let me know!