Stuck On the Dymo LetraTag Label Maker

My life is a never-ending quest of getting things organized, especially so now that I have two super-active kids who are running around every single day and creating “creative messes” everywhere they go.  My third one will no doubt soon be contributing to this creativity, so I need to be on guard. 🙂

Getting organized means not just knowing where things are stored, but also making them candy-sweet to the eye.

I’ve always loved labeling items: jars of food, items in the pantry, folders, boxes…but I have thus far used the old-fashioned method of writing the labels on small pieces of paper, cutting them out and then using sticky tape to adhere them to the surfaces that needed labeling.

Not long ago I was introduced to the concept of a label maker.  What you do is to type in the words you want and then print out the label onto strips of paper, all precut!  I’d seen them all over the internet and was already making mental notes on how I’d be able to put one of these babies to good use.

Well, the closest I got to a label maker was one of those label punchers, which I remember were from Dymo.  My daughter has a Dymo label affixed on her water tumbler, like so…

Hence it was with sheer joy when I was recently given the opportunity to experiment with this fantastic label maker from Dymo too: the Dymo LetraTag® Plus LT-100T.

Ain’t it a beauty?  I simply love the classy colors and shape.  Although it’s not a handheld type of label maker, and I can’t hold it with one hand when using it, it has a QWERTY keyboard, so typing out labels is pretty simple, much like typing on a keyboard.  My son actually thought it was a giant calculator when he saw it on my desk.

Okay, I do have a preliminary confession to make.  Of course you can tell how excited I am about using the label maker, so I got on it almost right away.  I did not have enough batteries when the label maker arrived, so it was a good 2-3 days before I managed to get a move on.  This label maker needs 4 AA batteries to run, by the way!

Back to my confession.

I DID NOT read the User Guide prior to using the label maker.  I actually wanted to test out if it was easy to use even without referring to the User Guide.  Well, I am happy to say that it certainly was!  I managed to print out several cool labels!

My first labeling project was to tackle my kids’ storage bin shelving.  It was in a pretty cluttered shape and I wanted to take the opportunity to declutter and somehow organize the stuff that would go in it.  Plus…I got my kids pretty excited when I showed them the label maker!

The Dymo LetraTag® Plus LT-100T comes with 2 tape cartridges for label printing: one pre-loaded and one on the outside.  One was white tape (labels are printed black on white), and one was clear transparent tape (labels are printed black on clear).  Swapping tape cartridges was easy-peasy.

Label printing was virtually idiot-proof too.  Simply type in whatever you want, style it (bold, italic, shadow, etc) and choose borders if you want, and then just hit the big PRINT button in front.  There’s a soft buzzing sound which indicates the label is being printed and when the sound stops, just press on the Scissors button to snip off the label!

The tapes in the cartridges are sticker-tapes, which made things all the more convenient!  My kids helped me peel off the sticker backings and stuck the labels on the colorful bins!  They helped me choose names for each bin and then also chose some of the label formatting.  I love that the label maker allows me to preview the label before printing.

Upon reading the User Guide however, I did realize that this label maker can print labels not only with alphanumeric characters, but also symbols, dates, and international characters.  For example, if you wanted to print “français”, you could simply set the language to French and then choose the appropriate letters to print out.

In addition, this label maker also allows storing frequently used labels, up to nine specific labels.  This is so you do not need to retype the frequently used labels each time you wanted to use them.

Although this awesome label maker fits all types of suitable Dymo cartridges, I wished it would allow me to change the font of the labels.  It prints labels only in one type of font, albeit you can format it to Bold, Italic, Shadow, Underline etc.

Also, one minor gripe I had was that the stickers it printed out didn’t really adhere well to the bins I stuck them on.  Perhaps I did not press it on hard enough, but it’s just a minor complaint.

Well, I can foresee this label maker playing an important role in my future organizational needs, as it would certainly be a staple item in my home office (or soon-to-be-created home office).  Heh.

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What I Liked:

• Compact and classic lines make the Dymo LetraTag® Plus LT-100T label maker an absolute beauty.
• Does its job well, prints labels efficiently with minimal noise.
• QWERTY keyboard is a major plus, making it easy to type out the labels.
• Easily portable, not heavy at all.
• Storage capability of up to 9 frequently-used labels
• Basically idiot-proof: formatting of labels is a breeze!
• Reasonably priced for all that it can do!

What Could Be Improved:

• Only one type of font is provided.  More fonts would be awesome!
• Labels not sticky enough on some surfaces.
• Needs 4 AA batteries to run.  Quite a LOT!

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The Dymo LetraTag® Plus LT-100T retails at USD29.99 and can be purchased directly from Dymo.com or from selected retailers like OfficeMax or Amazon.

Do you have a label maker or do you plan on getting one?