While I don’t believe we’ve come anywhere near the long-promised paperless society, one of the milestones that accompanies our always-connected and mobile society is the lack of cords: Fewer cords is good, but we are now slaves to our devices’ batteries.

Over the past month, I’ve been to our local Batteries & Bulb (formerly Batteries Plus) store. They are always helpful, and I’ve almost always gotten what I’ve needed there, but I just don’t like having to buy new batteries every time I turn around.

To be fair, most of the batteries I’ve recently replaced have not been replaced in many years; in some cases decades.

• Garage door opener: We have two – one in the house, and one in the car that goes in our (one-car) garage. I don’t think they have been replaced since we bought the house back in 1999. A button-type battery about the size of US nickel; one was getting weak so I replaced both.
• Rechargeable AA batteries for my wireless mouse: While recharageable, the AAs that came with the mouse finally couldn’t hold a charge. Fair enough: I’ve had the mouse/batteries since 2004. I have other rechargeable batteries, but these are pretty weak batteries (1700 milli-amp); most out now are 2500 milli-amp and up. And the charger that comes with the mouse – a holster of sorts you dock the mouse into – can’t change the other batteries. Pain in the ass to have to keep charging the others in another charger. And – maybe it’s just a false perception – but the higher amp batteries didn’t seem to last as long between changes. Bottom line: got new 1700 milli-amp batteries and all is good.
• Button battery for one of Romy’s watches: You know, those little bitty batteries with a diameter less than a pencil eraser – and only a few millimeters thick. The most difficult part of changing these batteries is getting a grip on the battery so it doesn’t fly off and disappear forever. Again, this battery has worked for … I don’t know how long. Long.
• Phone battery: Romy has an old Nokia candy bar phone, and the battery finally crapped out. Sad to shell out $40 for a phone that’s on its way out (AT&T just sent out a notice that the 2G network this phone uses [yeah, 2G!] is going away soon), but ya need a phone.

Further bulletins as events warrant…

Update: 4/4/2016 – Yeah, battery in TV’s sound bar crapped out. Another $5 ka-ching for Batteries & Bulb.

Also – it’s now Batteries PLUS Bulbs (Batteries + Bulbs), not Batteries & Bulb as listed above. I’ll keep my mistake to remind me to do a little bit better research.