Devin Jacobs
It’s easy to overlook how quickly ordinary things slip out of use. Often, their disappearance happens in the background, as new habits form and fresh tools take over. These weren’t rare or special objects, but practical parts of daily life. Then, without a clear moment of goodbye, they were gone. Let’s look at 10 such everyday things that faded away.
Payphones
Street corners once rang with the sound of coins dropping into payphones, a lifeline for quick calls. As mobile phones spread in the early 2000s, their use collapsed. Most countries have since removed them, and New York City cleared its final booth in 2022.
Floppy Disks
That little square piece of plastic once carried school projects, office files, even precious photos. Major manufacturers abandoned production in the 2000s, with Sony ending theirs in 2011. Yet, NASA relied on floppy disks until 2019 to run older systems. Today, the symbol lives on, immortalized as the universal “save” icon on screens.
Phone Books
Every doorstep used to see the yearly arrival of bulky phone books, thick with names and numbers. As online directories became the norm, their role shrank. AT&T halted white pages delivery in most states by 2010. A few libraries still archive copies to preserve a snapshot of communities once bound in print.
Film Cameras
Film photography meant crossing your fingers until you got pictures back from the lab. Digital arrived in the 2000s and made film feel ancient overnight. Kodak also stopped Kodachrome production in 2009, ending an era. Some wedding photographers still use disposables, and analog fans love that grainy texture.
VHS Tapes
Remember when family movie night meant digging through a stack of chunky VHS tapes? Those days ended when DVDs showed up with way better picture quality and no rewinding. Funai made the last VHS player in 2016. When Blockbuster died, it pretty much took VHS with it.
Cassette Tapes
Rewinding with a pencil, listening through hiss and crackle—cassettes defined music for decades. They peaked between the 1970s and 1990s before CDs took over. By 2009, sales dwindled to a fraction of the market. Still, Walkman nostalgia lingers, and collectors give tapes a second life in underground music circles.
Rolodexes
On many office desks, a Rolodex spun like a wheel of professional connections. Names, numbers, and titles filled its cards until software changed everything. Outlook and CRM systems made it obsolete. What was once a corporate status symbol now appears in antique shops, valued as vintage decor instead of business utility.
CRT Televisions
CRT TVs ruled living rooms everywhere until the 2000s brought us those thin, lightweight flat screens. By 2010, nobody was making the bulky old sets anymore. Serious retro gamers still seek them out because classic video games were built for CRT technology and look terrible on modern displays.
Travel Agencies
The 2000s basically destroyed traditional travel agencies when online booking became the norm. Those glossy brochure days ended as websites made everything self-service. Corporate and luxury markets keep some agencies alive, but barely. Most millennials and Gen Z have never experienced the old-school travel planning process firsthand.
Encyclopedias
Those massive encyclopedia collections were every family’s pride and joy until online research made them totally useless. Parents spent serious money on complete sets, thinking knowledge came in alphabetical volumes. Britannica stopped printing after centuries in 2012, officially ending the era. Now people use old volumes for decorating and DIY projects.