Avoid the Horror of the Lost and Found: Mabel’s Labels

by Mom It Forward on December 18th, 2010 | 1 Comment »

A few months ago, I discovered the horror that is my son's school Lost and Found: mountains of single gloves, moldy lunch boxes, smelly socks, and detritus of unknown origin. I vowed, after rummaging through it for almost an hour in search of my son's single lost glove, that I would never again have reason to put myself through this horrible experience ever again. I was resolute.

Yet, somehow, my son, still continued to lose gloves on a regular basis, no matter how much I ranted and raved, punished or bribed. This was even after I'd written his name in permanent marker on the tag inside each glove. Turns out even permanent marker bleeds and becomes unreadable. I was considering sewing each of his gloves either to both ends of a piece of yarn, or to the arms of his parka, until I received a label package from Mabel's Labels to review. Hallelujah! What a good idea! Why didn't I think of this before?

I received two of their Colourful Essentials Combo packs, one for each of my sons, customized with their names and different designs. There were:

30 Sticky Labels, for things like water bottles, notebooks, etc.
12 Shoe Labels
70 Tag-Mates, to go on clothing tags
2 Teeny Tags, which are metal tags that attach to lunch box zippers, camera cases, etc.

Turns out it's much better to have these colorful, easily-readable labels on my kids' stuff. I quickly began sticking labels in gloves and shoes, on parkas and backpacks. They do have a strong adhesive and say they're laundry-safe and waterproof, so I stuck a couple on the outside of my 7-ear-old's dirty knit gloves, let him wear them to school, then washed them in hot water. The labels didn't make it. It is better if you attach them to the interior tag of a nylon glove and wash them in cold water, as directed by Mabel's Labels. I also ran a water bottle with a sticky label attached, and it came out well.

Would I buy these again when I run out of these? Well, there are 114 labels/tags in each pack, so I don't see myself running out of them soon. But if I did, I would definitely invest in something like this; the savings in replacement gloves and clothing alone would probably cover the cost. Mabel's Labels are not the least expensive product of their kind. A quick internet search of comparable children's label products yielded the following results:

	price	quantity	ave. $/lbl
Mabel's Labels Colourful Essentials Pack	$48	84	$.57
Label Your Stuff Back to School/Camp Pack	$44.95	214	$.21
Name Bubbles School Pack	$35.50	144	$.25
Oliver’s Labels School Pack	$41.99	95	$.44

I have not exhaustively tested all of Mabel's Labels products or their competitors for quality or long-term adhesion. I am excited to continue to label all of my boys' gloves, clothes, and other items, so that I may avoid, hopefully forever, the horrible Lost and Found. If you have experience with other children's label products, please share a comment.

Disclosure: Mabel's Labels provided the labels free of charge for this review.