Martha Stewart Chalkboard Labels

I saw an advertisement for Martha Stewart's new office supply line, sold exclusively at Staples, and was very impressed with the collection!  Usually office supplies are either brown or black, stiff and no fun, or childish designs aimed at school-age kids.  This line is girly, but still functional, and fabulous!

Among some other things, I picked up some chalkboard labels to revamp the storage tubs we have lined up on shelves in the laundry room.  

The existing labels were made from my now-fried label maker and were too small for the small, dark place.  Since most the tubs are above my head [anything over 5'2'' is above my head :)] and there's no light in the laundry room, I sometimes have a hard time reading the contents of each tub.  The new chalkboard labels are much larger, and the white font on the black background will stand out much more than this:

Plus, this new labeling system gave me an opportunity to go through everything in the tubs to purge some cleaning items we rarely use.  Here's the before:

It was cluttered and because I can't reach some of the bins, some frequently-used items ended up in the metal laundry tin on top of the dryer.  As you can see it's now overflowing with dryer sheets, ant traps, and air freshener, all of which should be in a designated place.

After some purging and deciding how many categories I needed, I worked on my labels.  First I cured the chalkboard coating of the labels, which (according to the internets) prepares the surface for writing.  Who knows if that's necessary, since the labels had no instructions:

Then I scribbled my categories on the labels.  Forgive my handwriting - it takes a special skill to write with chalk, it seems.  It'll improve over time :)

Then I applied them to the newly organized tubs:

Dish towel collection is out of hand.  Need to purge some... :(

The purge pile (except the open items) will be sent to the next yard sale - who knows, someone might be looking for 4 Clorox bleach pens.  Why did I even buy them?  We have no tile in this house.

Now I'm off to find other projects for these chalkboard labels!  Watch out, pantry!