I’ve reached the part of my life where I keep deodorant at my desk at work. Not the travel-size one, either. A full stick. Because apparently there are about seventeen different ways my body decides to betray me. Hot flash? Check. Lunch walk because I’m “being healthy”? Double check. That time I ordered the mild dish at the Thai place, thinking I was safe? Ha. That “mild” was a liar. The spice hit me like a surprise slap, and suddenly I was sweating like I’d been dared to eat a ghost pepper on live television. For the record, I’m a wimp with spice. I don’t want bland, but I definitely don’t want a three-alarm fire in my mouth. Mild is supposed to mean reasonable. Instead, it sent me blotting my forehead with napkins and praying my coworkers couldn’t see the sweat forming.
My friend Andrea calls them the “flopsweats,” which feels about right—dramatic, a little theatrical, like something collapsed in a heap. One minute I’m fine, the next I’m fanning myself with a manila folder in a meeting, trying to look composed while my body stages its own sauna experience.
So yes. I keep deodorant at my desk now.
But deodorant is just the gateway drug. Once you start keeping one “emergency grown-up item” at work, you realize it’s a slippery slope. Suddenly your desk drawer looks like a survivalist bunker.
There’s the Advil, because my neck tenses up when I hunch over my laptop too long. Tums, for the regret that comes after the office decides Taco Tuesday was a good idea. I once sat through a meeting smiling politely while my stomach staged a protest march, silently cursing Past Me for thinking two enchiladas were a wise choice. That was the day the Tums earned permanent residency.
There’s a lone hair tie that’s seen more battles than most soldiers. Chapstick, because winter in the Midwest is personal. And somewhere, buried under paperwork, I know there’s a protein bar that expired back when the Jonas Brothers were still teenagers, but I keep it around “just in case.”
At twenty-three, I carried lip gloss, maybe a granola bar, and that was it. I didn’t plan for disaster because my body didn’t insist on it. But somewhere between then and now, life shifted. My desk has quietly transformed into a little outpost of self-preservation. Turns out, growing up is just swapping one survival drawer for another.
When you’re just starting out, it’s coffee pods, sticky notes, and a mirror to make sure your eyeliner hasn’t gone rogue after lunch. When you’ve got little kids, it’s pictures taped up, a toy car buried in your bag, snacks that double as meltdown bribes. As the years roll on, you add what life requires: band-aids for blisters, Pepto for questionable sushi, eye drops, a cardigan draped over your chair because office HVAC systems are apparently run by polar bears. At this rate, my desk looks less like an office supply stash and more like Mary Poppins’ purse—if she’d hit perimenopause.
And every item tells a story.
The deodorant isn’t just about sweat. It’s about realizing I don’t need to “power through” discomfort anymore—I deserve to feel fresh and human at work. The Advil isn’t about headaches—it’s about refusing to let stress hijack my whole day. The cardigan is about warmth, yes, but also about knowing myself well enough to prepare for environments that won’t change just because I wish they would. There’s something quietly dignified about refusing to suffer through the day when a stick of deodorant or two Tums can make it better.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped being embarrassed about needing these things and started seeing them as signs of wisdom. This isn’t weakness; it’s adaptation. It’s knowing myself better than I used to, and honoring that knowledge.
Of course, it’s still funny. Nobody wakes up and says, “You know what today needs? A permanent stick of deodorant at work.” But one day you’re standing in the bathroom stall, flapping your blouse like it’s a pair of wings, and you think, Nope. Never again. And you march yourself to CVS during lunch like a woman on a mission. That’s how it begins.
And the best part is—you’re not alone.
Everyone has desk-drawer confessions. I once borrowed scissors from a coworker and found not one but three different types of lotion, a lint roller, and an emergency pair of ballet flats. Another friend admitted she keeps a toothbrush and toothpaste because her lunch breath is apparently an act of terrorism. Ask anyone over thirty what’s in their drawer, and I promise it tells a better life story than their résumé. We’re all doing it. Quietly building survival kits for the strange, unpredictable, hilarious demands of our lives.
There’s solidarity in that.
The “I keep this at my desk now” phase isn’t about shame; it’s about belonging to the unspoken club of people doing their best with what they’ve got. Bodies change. Stress piles on. Life throws curveballs. And instead of pretending we’re invincible, we toss an extra stick of deodorant in the drawer and carry on.
That, to me, feels like resilience. Not the flashy kind you brag about online, but the everyday kind. The kind that looks like breath mints and Tylenol and an extra sweater. The kind that says, “I know myself. I know life. And I’ve got what I need to get through the day.”
And maybe that’s the heart of it: keeping these little things close isn’t just about emergencies. It’s about kindness to ourselves. About saying, “I’m worth being cared for—even at my desk, even on a Tuesday, even when I didn’t see it coming.”
The drawer isn’t glamorous. It’s chapstick and cough drops, not diamonds and gold. But some days, it feels just as valuable.
So if you’ve hit this season too, welcome. You’re not failing. You’re not ridiculous. You’re just wise enough to know life is unpredictable—and you deserve to be ready for it.
We’re all in this together—showing up, adapting, and stocking the drawer with whatever keeps us going. One stick of deodorant at a time.
Rachel L. Richard is a small-town farm girl turned suburbanite, a delightfully irreverent optimist, Mrs & Mama, floppy dog ear scratcher, lifelong learner, channel surfer, wanderer, believer, occasional creative, out-of-practice musician, cupcake addict, book devourer, and lover of all people.
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