Good Touch P-Touch

P-Touch, the vaguely dirty-sounding label maker, is one of my favorite things ever. While I’m not so much of a perfectionist that I use it for labeling my file folders, you should see what it can do with travel-size toiletries!

If you are a big enough nerd to do this with your allotted quart-size bag, you are plenty nerdy enough to take a picture of it and post it on facebook so all of your friends can admire/ make fun of you. And they will. This is actually what I packed when I took a trip to Germany, Scotland, and England for two weeks with my friend a couple years ago.

For your amusement:

Look how much space that shaving cream is hogging up! That was before I knew about the Alba Coconut Shave Cream, which could have gone into one of those little squeeze bottles so I could have fit more lip gloss or something. For this trip, I picked up one of those Schick Intuition thingies with the shaving stuff built in. We’ll see how that goes. I’m going to take it for a trial run tomorrow, so I’ll keep you posted.

I have a bit more flexibility for what I can bring this time. I’m going to France and Switzerland, so I’m bringing a big girl suitcase and checking my bag. If I’m going to be in Paris, I’m going to be DRESSED for it! Not that I specifically want to look good for the Parisians; I’m mostly thinking about looking nice in our photos. I’ve never considered that before a trip, but it makes sense. Might as well make it a Paris photo shoot and have great pictures to look back on. As my mother says “You’re only going to get older and uglier, so take all the pictures you can now.”

Sigh* Sadly, it’s starting to come true.

I’ll still have to pack efficiently, but there was no way I was going to go for 10 days with only a carry-on. My husband wants to bring just a duffle, but I’m making him bring the carry-on sized suitcase in case I need to put stuff in there too. HA! Yay for Husbands! I’m mostly thinking for the way back home; I want to make sure we have room shopping. (PARIIIIS!)

Even though I’ll be checking my bag this time, it still makes sense to bring the smallest amount of liquids in the tiniest containers I can manage. Between The Container Store and Ricky’s I have put together a fantastic little collection of tubes, jars, and tiny spray bottles. That fancy “quart size bag” is from Crate and Barrel; I think they still have them. But if you go to Mexico, for some reason they will unpack the whole thing into a crappy brand-less zipper bag to make sure that it fits. And they will not be as good at tetris-ing that stuff in there as you are. I haven’t had that happen anywhere else though.

Decanting everything into little bottles that are uniform in size and color is great for packing, but it makes it a bit of a challenge to figure out exactly what kind of goop is in which bottle. That’s where the P-Touch comes in! Annnnnd we’re back on topic!

There are a whole bunch of different kinds of P-Touches, but I bought the PT1290 because it was reasonably priced, accepts different sized tapes, and you can change the font and font size. As with most things, the refills are where the expense comes in, but if you’re not labeling everything you own (you must resist!) it’s really not a big deal. Also, maybe your office already has one of these and you can just buy your own tapes at Staples or wherever. (Or not, depending on how closely they monitor the office supplies…) I buy the Extra Strength 3/8” Black on Clear for my bottles. It’s indoor/outdoor, so it’s fine being in the shower, though I don’t keep the bottles in the shower long-term. Both the label maker and the labels have held up really well. I think they’ve been going strong for about two years now. I also have other tapes for other things. Making labels IS a little addictive, so you should be careful of that. For organizing the toiletries though, you just can’t touch this.