Labels Of Love

Originally I had planned to do a blog post tonight about our newly organized office space.  However, said office space looks like a tornado, tsunami, and hurricane walloped it simultaneously leaving one serious wake of destruction.  Needless to say, I’ve been doing alot of organizing and getting rid of things.  In fact, I have challenged myself to get rid of 100 things by the end of the week.  I’m making serious, SERIOUS project on this self proclaimed challenge and I intend to update you early next week on how that went:  what got tossed and what ended up in the yard sale pile.

So, because our regularly scheduled blogging program got thrown for a loop, how about an organizational teaser?  One about office supply storage.  You see, this weekend I discovered the Martha Stewart line of office supply products for Staples.  Oh instant love!  It’s like my two favorite things in the world (besides Colby of course), office supplies and organization, had a love child.  Anyway…one of the products I couldn’t possible leave the store without are these chalkboard labels:

You can actually read more about them or purchase them from Staples.  And no, I wasn’t paid or perked to write this post, I’m just a little Martha maven.  They cost $5.99 for a package of 12.  At fifty cents a label, I thought they were worth it.  I knew I could make something like this, since I had seen DIY chalkboard labels on Pinterest before, but this would save some serious time and would probably cost about the same.  I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to use them on.  Enter mason jars.

I’ve been storing office supplies, such as pencils and paper clips, in mason jars for awhile now and I love it.  It initially started last winter when I was setting up my very own office space upstairs, desperately needed some storage containers, and had a bunch of mason jars around the house that fit the task at hand perfectly.  Since then, I’ve been addicted.  As much as I love this setup, I’ve always wanted labels for the jars, thus the trendy chalkboard labels would be such a good fit.  The process was really easy.  I simply peeled a label and adhered it to the jar.

And then took a piece of chalk and wrote on the label.

At first, I was being really lazy and just wrote the numbers “1”, “2” and “3” on the jars because I reeeaaaaallly didn’t feel like taking my time to write out “Large Paper Clips” and “Small Paper Clips”.  So I showed these to Colby and he gave me that, “you are seriously wacko, what the heck is that, how are you going to know what’s in the jar” look with an extra side of smirkiness.  I got the hint.  Back I trotted into the kitchen to label the jars “properly”.  Better?!

Colby is happy now.  The good thing was that I got to test out wiping the chalk off the labels.  I am happy to report that the wipe off process was super easy, easier than a real chalkboard.  I just used a slightly damp cloth, wiped off the numbers, and they were ready for another go around.  Goose later “helped me” erase one of the jar labels with his tongue.  Silly Goose.  Why must dogs always be the center of attention?!

So I’m sure you’re thinking, “Angie, these are soooo cool.  But where will they go?!”  I’m glad you asked.  Well, you see those two blue painters’ tape lines above my half of the desk?

Colby is building me a pair of smaller floating shelves and the jars are going to be lined up on those.  I’m not 100% convinced of the size and the placement of the floating shelves yet, but these lines are ballpark.  I’m guessing the shelf project will be a weekend project so be sure to stay tuned for shelf details next week.  So this concludes this evening’s thrown together at the very last minute blog post.  Not bad, huh?!  Now I’m off to go bat my eyelashes at Colby and convince him to build a couple of floaty shelves for me!  Shouldn’t be too hard.

Pssst…I’m curious, is anyone else out there obsessed with mason jars like I am?  Any favorite uses?  Please comment and share.  Click on the word bubble at the beginning of the post send me your comments.  My favorite uses so far, other than for canning, are for water glasses and office supply storage.