Why I Love Labels and how you can use them
Labels! They’re one of the number one tools of professional organizers… and I’m no exception.
The number one thing labels do for any organizational system is identify a home for any given item or category of thing. For example, I have all of my kitchen shelves and drawers, denoting where each kitchen item goes. On my silverware & kitchen knife drawer, there is a label saying “Knives” and one saying “Silverware”.
The main reason I have done this is because I live in a multi-person household. I set up everything in our house when we moved in, because I was working from home while my husband went into the office right away. I did not want to spend the next few months/next year telling him where everything was when he was looking for something. Labels make it so that everyone is on the same page about where items live, and everyone can find things for themself. And then put them back where they belong! Let me tell you, it’s really hard mentally to put the scissors in a bin labeled “ice cream scoop”! Labels create harmony and make sure my family isn’t reliant on me being around for understanding how our organizational systems work.
I’m also really quite forgetful. If I don’t use something frequently, I might forget where it is or where it belongs. Labels mean I can scan my space and immediately know where to put things back. I also tend to use my space, and therefore my labeling, to prompt me to remember what I’m out of and need to restock. It’s much more obvious to know you need more paper towels when you have an empty shelf labeled “paper towels” than just a blank space. I hate trying to keep everything in my brain - labels allow me to externalize that information. They also truly help to solidify a new system; a physical representation of your intentions to get more organized and have homes for everything.
Now, some people really struggle with labels. I had a client who was very focused on aesthetics - he hated the look of labels around his space. We didn’t use them as liberally as I would have liked when organizing. Luckily, we were able to compromise - I never put labels on the exterior of anything. We focused first on zoning items, so he had an idea of where general categories of items were. Then, we did some minor, subtle labeling on the edges of shelves behind doors and the inside of drawers, and on baskets on shelves inside cabinets so he didn’t have to look at labels unless he was using them to find something. This worked really well for him, and also shows that labels are not the only thing to focus on - labels are a tool that are to be combined with other concepts such as decluttering, zoning, and containerizing.
Finally, I wanted to go over the few different types of labels you might see being used by your professional organizer, or ones you might want to consider implementing in your own home.
The first is one that I use with every client I have, most often for sorting, and that is sticky notes. Writing a quick label for a pile of a specific item (for example, a sticky note on a counter labeled “hair” with all your hair care items next to it) makes it much easier to figure out what you’re looking at and quantify it. I also will often use sticky notes as temporary labels when I’m trying to zone a space (labeling cabinets with “pantry items”, “spices”, “appliances”, etc) to help give the client a visual of how their space will be set up. The advantage of sticky notes is that they are easily movable and super easy to add more of to create more detail. But they are not a permanent solution. When a system is finalized, we move to the next stage of labels, which is the standard label maker label.
When I think of labels, they first thing that springs to mind is the standard white label with black text on it that you get from a label maker. This is my bread and butter; I love using these in the ways described in the first part of this post. These are what I like to finish all organizing projects with - on shelves, edges of drawers, bins, etc. They offer a clean, streamlined, easy to read look, and are the epitome of functional. However, I would be remiss to not mention the other two types of labels that I like to use for specialized cases.
The next type of label is the aesthetic label. These take a bit more work than the standard label maker. They might be purchased in a pack (for example, spice labels off of Amazon or Etsy) or printed at home with a printer or made with a Cricut. These labels are wonderful for the person/client who really wants to take it to the next level, where aesthetics are really important and the Pinterest look is the desired end result. They can look amazing, but in reality, their function is the same as a label maker label.
Finally, an upgrade to the aesthetic label that I think tends to be overlooked is the visual/picture label. I think these are so helpful for children who are not able or are still learning how to read, people who have dyslexia or other brain based conditions, or even people who are hyper-visual and prefer graphics to words. I would say these labels are aligned/similar to the use of clear containers. I think there is value in having both, especially for children with things like toys - a clear bin with a picture label makes selecting and then tidying up a specific type of toy super easy for a pre-literate child. And for those without the budget to buy all new clear containers, a picture label is a much cheaper option for making the items inside visible on the outside.
I hope you enjoyed this love letter to labels - I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments on if you use labels or how you’d like to implement them in your own home!
