apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

honestly if you have that much stuff that you need to buy a label maker, to label things, it may be time to purge!

GREAT MOVIE

I label everything, but I still haven't bought a good maker, I just borrow one from work for the weekend.

Oh yeah, and the vintage-y looking Dymo ones aren't so great if you are a serious labeler - the impressed words tend to fade over time and they lose their stick and curl over time as well.

I have the Brother P-Touch and use it a lot more than I thought I would. I got it free after rebate from Staples last year. My favorite thing to do is to label computer/camera cords - it makes life so much easier.

I have 2 P-Touches. One at work and one at home. I love them both and they help me stave off chaos.

You don't have to have much stuff at all to label. It is all about orginization style. I do much better, whether I'm organizing 2 items or 20, with labels and lots of structure.

I have the Brother that the Container Store sells. It comes with two rolls of tape (one clear, one white), batteries, and a nice case. It's a great value. It's the only product that Container Store employees do not get a discount on.

Ha! yes! Serenity!

Chalk is "flirty and fun"--what universe do you people live in? Labeling with chalk is fine if you change your mind every 10 minutes.

The P-Touch is great. Post could have stopped with that suggestion.

So, what's the best way to label--title, date, how specific?

They showed this photo in an earlier post. I can't remember what it was for but I was so excited to the the Serenity dvd. Huge Fan!

I'm with Bobbycat, if you really need to label everything then you've got too much stuff. Though it is amusing to see obsessive compulsive types go nuts with labels. There used to be a small photocopy shop near my house and the proprietor was extremely uptight and controlling, and she labeled everything, even the stapler. The STAPLER, for Pete's sake.

ElleBee--but did she have her name on it? I love people who put their names on everything. Ashley's Tape.

I agree w/ Palmetto, chalk isn't flirty, it's messy, scratches when you write and makes awful sounds! I like whiteboards much better.

I don't have any DVD cases at all. I put all my DVDs into binders made for CDs. There's one for drama, one for comedy, one for the kids' movies. They fit on the bookshelf, taking up no more room than three hardbacks. Why would anyone keep all the clutter of DVD boxes and buy special shelving units when it's so simple to, well, simplify?

I love my label maker!! I've got a Brother P-Touch too.

Some of my most handy labeling jobs:

Flour/Sugar: my containers are the same so it's nice at a glance to know which one to grab.

Spices: I've got a handy spice rack in a drawer with clear glass containers. Labeling is the only way to know what's what.

A home binder: Every manual for the house, from the fridge and stove, to the garage door opener and vacuum, has it's own clear sleeve in the binder labeled in the upper right hand corner. It's great tobe able to quickly flip through to find the right one.

Stainless steel containers in my craft closet: Sewing supplies, paints, ribbons, glues/tape. All labeled and stacked.

Oh and I make labels for friends and family when they want them to help justify owning one of these.

Brother P-Touch here. I label file folders, spice jars, boxes of sewing materials (notions, zippers, etc.), and tupperware containers. I hardly think it means I have Too Much Stuff. It means I don't waste time LOOKING for stuff, which is my least favorite thing to do in the world, ever, at all. I HATE looking for stuff. Hence: label maker.

We have one at work, too. Librarians bought it for labeling files, but I borrow it for files & binders. I have terrible handwriting, so everything just looks so much neater with a proper label.

BARFFFF..
buy a paint pen. $1.
i leave my dvds/cds in the original case. half the fun is the artwork.. and moving everything to a smaller case (top photo) just doubles your garbage.. and really, do you need to label the case when the disc has the title?
barf again,
matt

Matt,

You do have to label them, especially the old school two-sided discs that have the titles in really small print in the middle of the disc. Uniformity makes searching a lot less painful. And personally, all of the fun is in the disc, not the plastic case that takes up too much space.


Bobbycat5,

It may be an indication of too much stuff, but it may also be an indication of the desire for order. Look, just because we're in a consumerist society doesn't mean that throwing stuff away is the only answer to having too much stuff. How about valuing what you have and treating them nicely by storing them in an orderly manner?

I have a lot of DVDs and they are organized a certain way, but I'm slowly realizing that my technique isn't really working, especially when I'm looking for a certain movie on the go. I think I'm going this route, slim cases and labels on top.

I'm with antimatt on this one - half the fun is the cover art. Like with Vinyl...and people frame those now.

I use labels for off-season storage identification. I buy sturdy (not always clear) boxes and store with the labels face-out.

Paint pens, though. Good suggestion.



http://embritadesign.blogspot.com

I don't have a label maker, but I think some people just have different kinds of ways of organizing the stuff they have. This topic has taken the extreme approach: if someone likes or wants to label their files, then suddenly they are fiends labeling their coffee mug and their ketchup bottle. Labels from a print label maker do make things look neat, especially if they show. I used to have one at work and it was a good thing for labeling mail slots and form files and the like. An alternative to that is printing on the avery brand labels from your computer printer.

I don't know why people are weird about this. Some people keep more files about more stuff they keep track of than maybe you or me, they have so many CDs they don't want to hunt down the name of the artist hidden graphically within the cover art, what's it to you. The realistic thing about people with too much stuff is they tend not to care about it (or rather keep up with the accumulation of it) so much they organize and label it. They want to, but they don't get there. Labeling things can go too far, also, but I don't think we're in the territory here. It just set off a judgment thingy, where label people were somehow of the micromanagement mindset and possessive and a little paranoid. Why ramp this up to a mental illness? They're just labels, some people have a lot of things and they want them to be labeled neatly and consistently.