Mark Charged & Empty Batteries With Note Tab Flags

What do you want most in the world? Global peace? Tons of money? How about a kill-two-birds tip that solves everyday problems easily and inexpensively? One that you can get started on right this minute? Yeah, now we're talking! Post-It flags have come to the rescue, solving two big rechargeable battery storage woes.

Rechargeable batteries offer tons of advantages over their single-use counterparts. But one thing they fall short on is ease of storage.

Single-use batteries are easy; store 'em, use 'em up, then recycle 'em. But with a full deck of rechargeables on hand to power up all your home tech (plus any spare camera or laptop Li-Ions you're stocking), you're looking at a junk drawer mess of is-it-or-isn't-it-charged confusion.

We love this tip from a DIY Photography reader: Stick green Post-It flags on each battery when you charge it, indicating to your future self which ones are good to go. It also has the added benefit of making batteries easy to remove from tight-fitting cases or connections by just pulling on the flag.

You could take this tip one step further and color code empty or half-full batteries with different colored flags and tabs. A red tab signals that the battery needs a recharge, while a yellow one indicates one that has a little juice left.

DIY Photography (via Lifehacker)

(Last image: Flickr member wendzday01 licensed for use under Creative Commons)

Comments (2)

That's certainly an idea. But I prefer to use http://powerpax.3dcartstores.com battery carriers. They:

1) protect batteries from crushing
2) protect contacts from shorting out against metal objects
3) organize and group batteries together so they don't get lost in your bag
4) distinguish full from spent batteries (insert with nipple down or up)
5) last forever, whereas tape flags' adhesive collects dust, etc. and stops sticking

Note, I'm not affiliated with the company. I'm just a satisfied customer.

This is actually a neat idea.

As a photographer... I use bags to let me quickly know what batteries are good or dead. Sometimes you're quickly changing batteries to get the shot and resorting to throwing the dead battery into your camera bag... which makes it hard to know what's used and not.

So camera batteries, AAs, pretty much all batteries whether rechargeable or not... go in a plastic ziplock bag when they're fresh or freshly charged, once they are out of the bag they are either in the camera or dead to me.