"I Can't Believe You Don't Already Own One?"

We are in the middle of a move and being the slightly obsessive, anal retentive person that I am, I have been trying to purge, organize and pack simultaneously. This post is dedicated to a survival tip - "label it."

I purchased a label maker on Sunday. My husband rolled his eyes, my sister wasn't surprised and my brother-in-law said, "I can't believe you don't already own one." Me either, Mitch! Me either!

The beauty of a label maker is not merely the label (relieving you of the task of questioning the contents of this bin or that bin), but that it forces you to categorize and group your belongings in a meaningful way. I have two favorites thus far.

My first favorite is our new battery chest - a small plastic chest with three drawers that fits neatly in our kitchen cupboard. Each drawer is clearly labeled as the type of battery it contains (D and C, AA, and AAA). No more digging through that overstuffed junk drawer only to find that you are one D battery short of having an operable baby swing -OR- two months after a 10PM Target run for batteries, finding a brand new unopened stash of D's on top of the fridge.

My second favorite (courtesy of Pinterest) is a similar chest for our medicines. Each drawer labeled by the ailments said medicines treat (i.e. pain relievers, stomach, cold/sinus). No more vitamins and ibuprofen bottles hiding the infant tylenol that you are frantically searching for at 2AM. Believe it or not, while sorting our medicines we discovered that we had approximately 10 bottles of infant tylenol hiding in the back of our cupboard. That sh@* is expensive!

So, my survival tip is this: LABEL IT! It will save you money (as you won't buy products you don't actually need) and, most importantly, it will save you time - precious minutes that you can spend cuddling that 2 year old with a fever, rather than cursing at the pill bottles spilling out of the cupboard while you search for that elusive syringe.