Organization and Planning

Jun 23

Organization with a label printer

Tag: Labeling, Organization and Planning — danielpataki @ 9:41 am

I love office toys, and label machines are definitely among the top 5 best ones ever. Label your inbox, outbox, drawers, the office dog, your secretary, you can churn out hundreds of these awesome things quickly and label everything you see! On a more serious note however, you can use label printers for a variety of uses. Let me show you the cool office tool I found first, and them some alternative uses you can use it for.

The Brother QL-570

The one label printer I found exceptionally good was the Brother QL 570. Partly because it looks good, partly because of the ease of exchanging cartridges and partly because there are so many good reviews for this product. You essentially get a mini printer which can print anything in the given space, so you can put it to exceptionally good use.

A huge plus for this label printer is that it has USB connectivity (thus you get more control) for Windows and Mac OS X, so whether you own a Vista, XP or Leopard system, you will happily print away. From the reviews I’ve seen the Leopard version has less features, but no problem in printing.

Your label can be a maximum of 2.4″, and the printing area 2.3″, giving you plenty of space when using it for organization. The quality is 300×600 dpi, which is more than enough for our goals, after all, this isn’t a photo printer. There is only one left in stock, but take a look at the “More buying choices” to the right where you will find alternative sources.

How to use label printing to organize

One great use for a label printer is cataloging. I expect many people have found this use, weather you want to organize your books, CD collection, boxes when moving, your label printer will be an invaluable accessory. Since you have plenty of space, you can include a lot of “metadata” on the label. For books you can indicate if you liked it or not, the contents in a few words, the author, etc. You can add the contents of each box when you move, you can indicate fragile contents, or stuff you will need right away.

You can also print some labels for note taking actually! I stick all sorts of tidbits in my Moleskine for example, and with a label printer you don’t even need any glue, you can just stick it right in. Print out tasks your received from your boss, a shopping list your wife sent you and just stick it in your regular notebook you use for organization. You can also jot down quick notes to remember and stick it on your monitor so you don’t forget to deal with those issues.

If you’re a budding gardener and have a bunch of potted plants, why not create and arboretum? Print each plant’s English name with the Latin name below italicized and your garden will look like a pro arboretum. You can use it this way to label your stamp collection, bug collection, anything you might want to remember the names of.

If you use plastic boxes for storing food you can also stick labels on them so you don’t need to open them to see what’s inside. Your food will stay fresh longer, you’ll keep those odors in, and you can add expiration date to make sure you don’t eat anything after you’re not supposed to.

There are loads and loads of options as you can see, the limit is your imagination. If you use your label maker for a unique task let us know in the comments, we’ll showcase the best ones on the blog front page!