Ah, a new school year. A time for new beginnings, new friends, and of course a trip to the office supply store for back-to-school supplies. With lists in hand, my sons and I headed to the store and carefully roamed the aisles filling our cart with notebooks, paper, pencils, markers, crayons, and last but not least, a P-touch label maker. OK, that final item was an impulse purchase Mommy made at the checkout counter. And boy, since then, I’ve been putting my personal touch on everything!
It all started innocently enough. As I was pulling my sons’ folders and notebooks out of the bag, I thought I would label them with their names just in case they misplaced them (as children often do). But before you knew it, I was printing off a flurry of identifying information covering every inch of their new belongings. My sons were unaware of my labeling frenzy until the first day of school when my eldest son opened his backpack and was mortified at the contents inside. In his mind, I might as well have stuck pink flashing neon signs all over everything screaming “nerd, nerd, nerd.” I guess it probably wasn’t the best way to start off middle school.
What can I say? I’ve always been one who was big on organization. And this labeling fetish really isn’t new, it’s just resurfacing from my youth. As a kid, I had a manual orange DYMO label maker that by a click of a wheel and a squeeze of a trigger I watched each individual letter appear on a colorful piece of adhesive tape. I pretty much labeled everything I could get my hands on and my grandmother even let me label some things at her house. In retrospect though, I realize she was probably humoring me since I’m pretty sure she could tell the difference between small plates, large plates, bowls and cups.
So after I labeled all of my sons’ back-to-school items, I got itchy to find some new things to classify. I grabbed my P-touch and like a divining rod leading to water, my P-touch led me to some unruly recycling bins in the garage. “Ah, this is a job for P-touch,” I said with superhero pride. “But, first I must consult with Recycling Man” (a.k.a my husband).
“Honey, I want to label the recycling bins. How should I label them?”
“Why do you want to label them? They’re see-thru plastic containers. I think I can figure out what’s in them.”
“Oh, stop being such a pain and just tell me.”
“Alright, well, there’s newspapers, #1 plastic, cans, corrugated cardboard, non-corrugated cardboard, and non-peat plastic.”
“Who’s Pete?” I naively questioned.
His glare was enough to send me back inside to seek out something else to sort and categorize.
My next destination was the basement where I found stacks of stuff littering the shelves and spilling onto the floor. “Ugh. This is a disgrace,” I said with a grin. After purchasing ten very large plastic bins, I proceeded to contain this chaos and label each bin accordingly. When I was finished, it was a sight to behold.
Since then, the kids have gotten involved in this labeling craze, but I had to cut them off when I caught them printing unsavory words and labeling each other’s corresponding body parts. And the cats run as soon as they see me waving my new “toy” in their direction.
Sadly, I’m afraid I might have finally run out of things to label, so my P-touch sits quietly tucked away in my desk drawer just waiting to emerge.
Well, there is always my husband’s tools and underwear drawer. “Hey, honey….”
