Some Thoughts on Tape Labels
I own a label maker. This is probably not surprising to anyone who has read more than a few posts on this site. The specific model is a Brother P-touch, the kind that takes standard TZe tape cartridges. It's not fancy. It has a small screen, a keyboard that's slightly too small for comfortable typing, and it prints adhesive labels on a strip of laminated tape that you cut with a built-in blade. I've had it for years and I use it more often than I'd like to admit.
There are people who will tell you that label makers are unnecessary — that a piece of masking tape and a marker will do the same job. And they're right, technically. A handwritten label communicates the same information as a printed one. But there's a difference in permanence and legibility that matters if you're labeling things you intend to keep organized for more than a few weeks. Handwritten labels fade, peel, and become illegible. They look provisional, like you might change your mind. A printed label has a sense of commitment to it. This thing has been named. It belongs here.
I should acknowledge that there's a spectrum of labeling, and I have opinions about where on that spectrum you should fall. At one end is the person who labels nothing. Their filing cabinet drawers are mysteries. Their storage bins are opaque in every sense. Finding anything requires opening things and looking inside, which works fine when you have four containers and becomes unbearable when you have forty. At the other end is the person who labels everything, including things that don't need labels. I once visited someone's home office where the telephone was labeled "TELEPHONE." This strikes me as excessive.
The sweet spot, I think, is labeling things whose contents are not obvious from the outside. File folders, storage boxes, binders, cable bundles, backup drives. These are containers where the outside tells you nothing about the inside, and a label bridges that gap. You don't need to label your stapler. You do need to label the box of assorted cables under your desk if you ever want to find a specific one without dumping the whole box out.
Filing cabinets are where labels really shine. A well-labeled filing cabinet is a small work of art. I don't mean that aesthetically, though there is a visual pleasure in seeing uniform labels marching down a column of hanging folders. I mean functionally. You pull open a drawer and you can see, at a glance, where everything is. Tax documents. Insurance. Appliance manuals. Vehicle records. Each folder has a label, each label is legible, and the system works without requiring you to remember anything. The filing cabinet remembers for you.
I relabeled my entire filing system about a year ago. The old labels had been accumulating for years — different fonts, different tape widths, some printed and some handwritten. A few had become partially detached and were curling at the edges. It was functional but aesthetically chaotic, which bothered me more than it probably should have. I spent an evening printing new labels for every folder, all in the same font and size, and replacing them one by one. The information didn't change. The organization didn't change. But the uniformity made the whole system feel maintained, which encouraged me to actually maintain it.
There's something worth saying here about the relationship between labeling and thinking. When you label a folder or a box, you have to decide what to call it. This sounds trivial, but it's actually a small act of categorization that forces you to think about what the thing contains and how it relates to other things. Is this folder "Taxes" or "Tax Returns" or "Tax Documents 2025-2029"? Each name implies a slightly different scope and purpose. The act of choosing a label is the act of deciding what a category means, and that decision, made thoughtfully, makes the whole system more coherent.
I think this connects to something deeper about how humans relate to their possessions and their information. We have an impulse to name things. It's one of the most basic cognitive acts — to look at something, decide what it is, and give it a word. Labeling a file folder is a mundane expression of the same impulse that leads us to name rivers and mountains and constellations. We name things to make them knowable, to distinguish them from other things, to bring them into a system of meaning that we can navigate.
That's probably too grand a claim for a blog post about tape labels. But I do think there's a genuine satisfaction in looking at a well-organized shelf or cabinet where everything is labeled clearly and consistently. It's the satisfaction of legibility — of being able to look at a system and understand it without effort. In a world that often feels chaotic and illegible, a labeled filing cabinet is a small domain where everything has a name and a place.
On the practical side: TZe tape is not cheap. The genuine Brother cartridges cost more than they should for a roll of tape with adhesive on one side. I've used third-party cartridges with mixed results. Some are fine. Some have adhesive that doesn't hold up over time, which defeats the purpose. For labels I expect to last years, I buy the real ones. For temporary labels — labeling boxes during a move, marking things that are going to be reorganized soon anyway — the generic tape is fine.
I realize I've now written nearly a thousand words about labels. This is either a testament to my genuine interest in the subject or evidence that I need more hobbies. Possibly both. In any case, if you own a label maker and it's sitting in a drawer unused, I'd encourage you to take it out. Label a few things. See if the small satisfaction of a named, categorized, legible space doesn't improve your afternoon, even slightly.
— Kevin Vadala