Label Me

When I was in kindergarten or first grade (or maybe both) I won a Dyno label maker selling Tootsie Rolls and salt-water taffy door-to-door to as a school fundraiser. Do you remember those things? They were the best! It came with three different dials, each with a different type face, and a few colors of tape, and it all fit into compartments inside the nice plastic case.

A place for everything, and all that. I loved it! That satisfying noise it made with each stamped letter: kind of a cross between a "click" and a "chunk". Then there was the cut button that you had to hit twice in order to peel off the label backing.

I labeled everything.

My books, my toys, my brother, my friends, my anxieties, you name it.

Well, after years of a relatively label-less existence (we all have a few we cling to) I gave in on Friday and bought a low-end Brother labeler. It's not fancy. Just one font, for example, and there's no saving frequently used labels. I have no truck with that. But it does let me clearly distinguish the laundry detergent from the washing soda in their identical plastic bins. And my new magnetic spice wall will be greatly improved by neat, transparent labels on each metal tin. How could I have done without it all these years. (Rusty, can I get a hallelujah!) Paul mocks me, but how could he truly understand?



Did you know you can make your very own circa-1975 Dyna labels online? Or pretty close, anyway. It doesn't make the cool "chunk" sound, but it does make some very nice labels!