Labels

I started the day with a tirade against labels as I was doing laundry.  Purposely, I cut off every label I could find coming out of the dryer today attached to whatever item I found them on, even the towels and wash cloths!  Have you ever asked yourself, "Why do we need labels?" or "Do I really need to advertise for whomever made this garment?"

I don't know about you, but I hate labels.  Yes, I said hate!  Why, you might ask?  Well, for one thing they irritate my skin on the back of my neck.  Surely I am not the only one am I?  They scratch, and itch, and annoy consistently and constantly.

Even worse are the ironed-on, permanent, decal labels that irritate without relief after six times through the laundry when they turn into nasty, cracked versions of themselves forcing me to consider merely throwing out the offender, shirt and all!  They can't be cut off or scraped off nor ironed back into the soft, pliable messages their creators thought these decals would remain.  Or did they even care?

Even better are the shirts with two or three labels (including one along the side seam) as if we did not know how to do laundry after all these years of practice.  Most of us don't care what blend something is once we purchase it anyway.  The laundry items all go into the washer in the same batch regardless of the fabric, limited only by color if we are still into sorting our darks from our whites.  Moreover, we do still ultimately teach our offspring how to maneuver through "Laundryland" don't we?  Even if Home Economics has disappeared from school curriculums, teach we do because we want our children to take over the task of maintaining their own clothes eventually.

Have you ever really cared what brand name a shirt is or from where you acquired it once you've worn it?  You'd never find the same shirt again by the time the current one wears out and probably you wouldn't care, unless you are into uniforms.  Most of us want variety and choose the latest styles and colors off the rack when we venture out for a replacement anyway.

So I don't know when the plot was devised to create massive discontent by way of labels nor whom the plotters were.  I suspect it might have been the manufacturers from somewhere in the universe as a sort of revenge for sweatshops but I do know.  I am on a warpath to eradicate labels from my life with my trusty scissors until by popular opinion they replaced with clothes that contain only purchase tags which can be happily removed right from the get-go.  As for those ironed-on, decal labels?  I won't even buy clothing with those in place anymore.  Believe me when I say I check and that is a rule set in stone!

And that is my tirade on labels.

Little Free Library

Recently I saw a "Little Free Library" in a local public park.  What is it you might ask?  It is an adorable, small house on a pole filled with books.  It operates on a "take one/leave one" premise.  I wasn't sure what it was all about but decided to look into it further when an article came out in our local paper about five of these that are now located in our county within public parks.  Ours contain a shelf with books for adult readers and another shelf for children's books.  The most recent little free library was worked on by about 15 children who raised money for the materials to build the library and then stocked it with books.  What a cool thing for these kids to be able to say, "We made this happen."

So where did the idea come from?  There is a site that tells the story about Todd Bol of Hudson, Wisconsin who came up a way to create something that would pay tribute to this mother.  She was a school teacher who loved reading.   He built a small replica of a one room school house, mounted it on a pole in front of his house and filled it with books.  He affixed a sign that said "Free Books" and the neighbors and his friends loved it.  To read more, click here.

There are plans for making the house available online too.  To be part of the organization that started the idea, each little free library must have a steward to maintain it.  There is also a blog about the trials and rewards various libraries have endured and enjoyed respectively.

Reading about this got my mind going along the lines of these being placed near bus stops in low income areas for low income kids to benefit from and near low income elderly housing for the same reason.  Maybe a combination of these two groups of people (young and old) could become stewards together of a particular Little Free Library.  Would the young and the old learn to value each other more then?  I'd like to think so.

Here is an example of one of the libraries from the local newspaper story.