Where IS it?? Why Everyone Needs a Label Maker

Sorry for the lag between posts. Like sometimes gets ahead of me!

This post is dedicated to one of my pet peeves: cords, chargers, ear buds, and so on. Everywhere. And no one can seem to find what they want or need. And, of course, to the sheer joy of label makers.

Do you have "the drawer" or "the box"? You know, the one that is full of mystery cords? When you pull out the camcorder or your mp3 player, are you living in terror for the day it needs to be charged because you have no idea where the cord is? If so, I have a solution to prevent this from this day forward.

First, buy a label maker. I use a small Brother handheld. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it.

And here is WHY I love it. Each time something new comes into this house, before the box even hits the floor, I break out the label maker. I hear a collective sigh from everyone in the house as anal-retentive Mom has to "do her thing," but no one complains when I know what every cord or accessory goes to. Here's what I do:

This way I know who belongs to what and what is what and never spend a half hour trying to find which charger goes with which item. And I never have to put someone else's potentially grody ear buds into my ears! As you might imagine, on Christmas morning I am ready with a trash bag, a cardboard recycling box, and my label maker, ready to go to town!

I have used my trusty label maker for all kinds of other odd things. For example, when we first bought this house, I was dumbfounded by the number of light switches, and I could never remember which switch turned on which light. I labeled them for the first few months until I got the swing of it with a nice near label above each switch. (Let them laugh at me!)

How about when the power goes out? I live in a rural area and have a generator, but it powers only certain outlets in my house. Rather than trying to remember, I have labeled each of those outlets with a small PO (power outage) label in the top corner.

And then my single-serve Crystal Light packets, of course, come in boxes, which I recycle because they are bulky (and I rip the tops off). Besides, the printing on the tubes is tiny. My family goes through tons of them, so here's what I do:

Whenever I have an empty container from the pitcher-size Crystal Light or similar drinks, I move them from the cardboard boxes and into one of these and label the top. Then I just keep refilling them with new ones. It makes them easy to find, see, and store.

I fear that I am scaring you with my anal retentivity at this point. But really, buy a label maker. And use it for labeling the plugs themselves for everything that is plugged in behind your entertainment center, for example. Then, when you need to unplug the cable box because it died again, you do not have to have someone wiggling the cords from the top to find the right one. You can just unplug the one that's labeled Cable Box. 

Hope everyone had a good weekend. :)