This Kitchen Staple Might Seem Excessive To Some, But It's Worth It

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Creating a minimalist, streamlined kitchen that's stocked with essential items makes cooking a breeze and clean-up even quicker. However, there's one item that you should make room for even in the most modest of kitchens: a label maker. While this bit of the tool kit might seem excessive to cooks who value simplicity, it's actually a useful tool for making a cooking space even more functional and organized.

Label makers, in addition to this parchment paper trick, are superb for organizing drawers and kitchen cabinets as you can stick the labels they produce inside cutlery trays, on the edge of shelving, and on storage baskets. Making a dedicated space for every utensil, from spatulas and can openers to rolling pins and ladles, means you'll always be able to find them quickly and put them back exactly where they belong.

While this might seem over the top, it truly makes a difference to have a named spot in your kitchen for every bit of bric-a-brac, such as spare batteries, matches, or birthday candles. You can declutter your kitchen once, stick a label on everything, and (fingers crossed) never have to reorganize again, allowing you to say goodbye to the mental load of keeping tabs on every bit of kitchen paraphernalia once and for all. Better yet, if you've labeled the drawers neatly, everyone else in the family has no excuse for putting them away in the wrong place.

One of the best things about a label maker is that it takes seconds to print out new labels. You can simply type in whatever you'd like (either on the device itself or on your phone via Bluetooth), press a button, and watch it create a label in real time using different fonts, special characters, and even numbers. This means you can print out expiry dates and stick them onto homemade foods, making it easier to rotate your meals for freshness and keep track of items like frozen baby food and breastmilk. Once printed, remove the film on the back and stick your labels onto jars, freezer bags, cabinets, and more. 

As the labels are easy to remove, you can peel them off storage jars and bottles of spices and replace them when they get dirty or when you want to change their contents. While you could use a marker or pen to label jars, the aesthetic of a printed label over a handwritten scrawl is far more appealing and means your entire kitchen will have a neat, uniform appearance. 

This Dymo handheld label maker requires batteries. Meanwhile, this Supvan Bluetooth label maker is rechargeable and uses thermal printing technology, which means it never needs ink cartridges.