For the past month I’ve been an ambassador for Brother P-Touch and I’ve been using the Brother™ P-Touch® Labeling System. I had the Brother™ P-Touch® PT-D200 Desktop Label Device and it performed very well. My personal project was to clean up and organize our basement. We moved into our new home last August and at that time many, many boxes made their way down into the basement. I tried to pile things up so that we could navigate around the basement to do things like wash our clothes and more. Nearly everything is in cardboard boxes and while the basement is pretty dry I don’t want to store everything in cardboard.
There were a ton of cardboard boxes down in the basement. We started our packing in a pretty organized manner but as the move got closer we threw things into every box where they would fit. So the new organization had to be more careful so that we could be able to find everything quickly and easily. The PT-D200 was great for making labels for every one of the boxes. It was so simple to write up every label and then print them out multiple times. I made two labels for every box so that The box and the cover each got a label.
As I began to stack up the boxes I noticed that I was regaining a bunch of space in the basement. There are two rooms in the basement that we use for storing things. There is a large room where the washer and dryer is located and a small room that is great for storing the boxes for holidays and other things that we rarely open. Boxes of old memories, toys that I have collected and holiday decorations.
When I got started with this project I went and purchased seven 66qt plastic bins. I knew that I would need a few more of these to transfer the cardboard box items into new homes. I like to have boxes that contain similar type things to be similar type boxes so I generally pick up holiday colored boxes right after a major holiday for 1/2 off so that the Halloween stuff is in Orange and the Christmas stuff is in Red. It works pretty well but I don’t have all the stuff organized that way so having labels for quick identification is key. Even if when I find things that I know we aren’t going to end up using.
The best thing about this PT-D200 label maker was that it had a pretty big keyboard. With my big hands I hated using smaller label makers. Since I was writing longer labels the bigger keyboard kept me from getting frustrated while making labels. I also liked the reprint feature and the ability to clear the whole line of text quickly.
The image above was what I started with in the main room of the basement. There was a ton of stuff in it. In addition to all of the things in boxes there were also things in space bags. We have been hanging on to all of the kids old clothes to give them to family when they have kids of their own. No one has had a baby yet so we still have everything. That hasn’t been entirely cleaned up and organized yet but will be soon because I have more to finish with the basement cleanup. We also had four cardboard boxes of cleaning supplies. I consolidated those into one big plastic container that had no lid.
Now I feel a little better about the main room of the basement. I found some of my old boxes of things I want to go through and also all my boxes of LEGO Star Wars sets. Those are in the big cardboard boxes on top of the two blue trunks against the back wall. There are clothes to sort and that will get done soon but eventually that area will be much more clear and usable. I want a better area for clothes and also a place to put staple foodstuffs.
As for the small room it has most of the boxes and I’ve stacked them with the labels facing out and also have things stacked so you can see around the stacks to find what we are looking for. It is now so much more easy to get what we are looking for when we go into the basement.
And another project for another day is to break up that cast iron radiator in the far corner and that will give us even more room. We’ll be using the PT-D200 in many future projects. I’ve still got my office, the garage and the kids playroom area to organize.
Throughout this past month I posted to my blog about my progress and also what I thought about the Labeler itself. You can see what I think as well as what the other P-Touch Ambassadors have to say on the Brother Facebook Tab. You can also learn more about the different labeler options that are available on the Brother P-Touch Label Printers website.
Disclosure: I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Brother P-Touch and received a product sample to facilitate my review as well as a promotional item to thank me for my participation.