"Content Modules" not associated with Pages or Posts?

So I imagine this need comes up a lot. There are some repeating text areas that need show up throughout all the pages of the site. (like a rotating quote in the sidebar, or a list of phone numbers in the footer, etc.). Users with Editor status need to be able to edit these small blocks of text.

Creating widgets seemed to be the most intuitive way to do this, but then I realized that editors are not meant to have access to these.

The solution I see most frequently offered up by others is to create a custom post type and create individual posts or pages for these areas. But to me that seems pretty unintuitive and just not “semantic” since these areas are neither self-contained posts nor pages. Meta boxes or custom fields are not an intuitive solution either, because they’re associated with specific posts and pages.

Is there some solution I’m missing? Sometime I wonder if I just haven’t been googling the right keywords. But I just can’t seem to figure this one out!