The Island of Misfit Keys

This is a really simple project, so simple that it's almost not worth blogging about... but it's amazing what a few dollars and a few minutes can do to ease your mind!  EVERYONE should do this!  Every year that passes is just another key to forget the purpose of.  

It makes me think of my grandparents' kitchen.  I always wondered why my grandmother would write the date on things with a wax pencil... how could you forget when you got something, or have it and not use it for long enough that it would go bad?  Well, I found out when I was helping her after my grandfather died.  In 2006, I was finding things in the pantry that were marked as early as 1992.  Turns out that when you're busy and things are around you long enough, you forgot when you got them and what you got them for.  There was even a bottle of liquor in a cupboard in the laundry room marked "opened April 1974"

This little project started when I accidentally broke a window pane in our side door (which we never use) and proceeded to tear through the junk/key drawer and laundry room looking for the keys to it... with no luck.  And to top it off, they were keys to a deadbolt which we had just installed a couple of months before, so I knew they were around somewhere!  I did manage to find the keys within a few days and they happened to be safety pinned to our spare house key (I'm always putting things in "safe" places, never to be found again).  

It got me thinking though... how long will I remember that the little keys on the piece of molding on the shelf by the phone belong to our storm door?  Or that the keys attached to the yellow springy bracelet thing are for my grandmother's apartment (note that those were still in the drawer even though she died two years ago)?

Enough is enough!  I decided it was high time to label every single key that we have and know the use for and toss the ones that we know for sure don't go to anything anymore.  

I whipped out my trusty label maker and hit up the local hardware store for a bunch of fun colored plastic key chains.

colorful organization things + labelmaker = YAY FUN!!!!

As usual, I got caught up in the project and only took the "after" photo!  We threw out lots of keys, including keys for a car we don't have anymore, my deceased grandmother's apartment keys, old work keys, places we don't live anymore, etc...   but naturally it couldn't be that simple because there are still a number of mystery keys that we weren't totally sure about and weren't ready to trash.  So for now there's a zip baggie labeled "keys I think are trash, 2012."  

The rest got labeled (there are WAY more than in these photos).  It took about 15 minutes and I bought a couple dozen of the plastic key labels for less than $10... time and money well spent!