Storage fails quietly. A box goes into the loft, a bin goes on a high shelf, and eighteen months later nobody knows what is in either. The contents are effectively gone whilst still occupying space, which is the worst of both outcomes. Labelling solves this, but not in the way most people attempt it.
Label the things you cannot see, not the things you can
A clear bin holding tea bags does not need a label; a sealed crate in the loft does. The instinct after a big tidy-up is to label everything, which takes an evening and mostly decorates containers whose contents were already obvious. Spend the effort where visibility is genuinely absent.
Write what future you will search for
Kitchen is a useless label. Christmas lights, spare curtain hooks, camping stove is a useful one. Write the contents, not the room or the category, and add the date the box was packed. If a box needs more than five words, it probably contains two boxes’ worth of unrelated things.
Label position matters more than font
Put the label on the short end that faces out, and add a second on the top for stacked storage. On a shelf of pull-out bins, a label on the front lip is readable; one on the lid is not. This is the practical case for handled bins with a flat front face, of the kind found in ranges such as mDesign, since they give you somewhere sensible to write.
Choose the labelling method for the environment
Loft and garage boxes see temperature swings and dust, and ordinary sticky labels curl off within a year. Masking tape and a permanent marker survives better than most printed labels, is free, and is easy to change. In damp spaces, write directly on the container or use a tie-on tag rather than adhesive.
- Contents plus packing date, in five words or fewer
- Two labels on anything that will be stacked
- Photograph the open box before sealing it
- Keep the photos in one dated album on your phone
- Re-label rather than crossing out when a box is repacked
The photo inventory is the underrated half
A picture of the open box, taken from directly above with everything visible, takes three seconds and answers questions no label can. Take a second shot of the sealed box in position so you know where it went. When you need the spare curtain pole in two years, you will find it from an armchair.
You probably do not need a label printer
They are pleasant to use and produce a satisfying result, and for most households they are a purchase that gets used for one weekend. Unless you are labelling hundreds of items or need something that survives a commercial environment, tape and a marker does the same job for the price of neither. Buy one because you enjoy it, not because the system requires it.
Review the labels, not just the contents
Boxes get raided. Half the contents leave, something unrelated goes in, and the label becomes a lie, which is worse than no label at all. Once a year, open anything you have not touched, check the label still matches, and rewrite it if not. A wrong label costs more searching than a blank one.