How to label storage containers

General Discussion How To
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Fun family craft project maybe. Get out the stencils and label your storage containers?

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List of materials:

  • Yellow poster paint or similar.
  • Some small sponges or “pouncers” for crafting.
  • Brush with soft bristles, about 1” wide as alternative to the sponges.
  • Stencils, preferably plastic but paper ones can be used if you wipe the paint off right away.
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2

That would be a great idea, I just open cans until I find what I’m after! :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

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I just use ammo can stickers i get from Amazon.

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I use the letter/number stickers that can be purchased nearly anywhere.

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I keep meaning to use my Cricut to make labels for the cans but I haven’t got around to it yet. One of these days!

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I shake the can and that narrows it down to which ones I want to open and close while finding what I actually need.

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on all my ammo cans i use blue painters tape that i wrote on with a sharpie. that way if i need to repurpose a can, i can just remove the blue painters tape and mark it with what it is now carrying… i’m cheap, but it works.

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Change the tape every couple months or else it you won’t get it cleanly off.

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surprisingly with the painters tape i’ve not ever had that problem and i’ve left it on there for years at a time before.

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I guess I should have explained why I chose the yellow paint and stencil approach. A photo of the markings on the ammo box might help.

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Based on the lettering and box construction details, I have identified these as WWII ammo boxes. Wish I had more. As is usually the case, the WWII variety is better than the newer ones partly because they stack securely and the width is half the length so you can palletize them interlocked like bricks. The rubber seals seem to still be in good shape. I hope my seals are as good when I am eighty years old.

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When I took the photos I noticed, however, that the lettering is NOT stenciled; it is stamped. Oh well, I was trying to continue the original style lettering at least in spirit. I used water-based paint that should wipe off if I decide to remove it.

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Great idea! Marked cans are certainly easier to sort through. I did mine with a Brother label maker and put the info on the latch and the top handle for quick reference. They can be peeled off for content reassignment. Our local surplus store has used military metal cans of various sizes at a reasonable price, so I have “a few”…

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Yep I use blue painters tape as well. Before that it was just a Sharpie :grin:

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I use the ones I get from https://www.weaponstickers.com/

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great minds and all that. I use sharpies still, i just write on the blue painters tape w/ the sharpie, and then label both the latch and the top so that when i pull the can out from under the shelf its on, not only do i see what it is on the front, but when i pull it out looking at it top down i see it too.

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do you have an example of one, i went to their site, but saw no examples really other than whats on their main page.

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Looks like they changed, Check this out this is what that site used to sell.

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yeah those are pretty nice, and not stupidly priced. I may have to buy some of them myself.
thank you for sharing those there.

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18

If you have all the same ammo cans, and then everything is labeled and stacked and organized it’s awesome

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This post’s ensuing discussion gave me some other ideas for labeling containers. My original plan was to simulate military ammo can style lettering, and turn it into a craft project. Then I saw all of these other interesting ideas. To summarize so far:

  1. use painter’s tape and maybe put my stencil on the tape, making it easier to remove and reducing risk of damage to vintage containers. Keep it simple.
  2. found out you can get magnetic ammo can labels. Hmmm.
  3. go with the ammo can decals that are commercially made. That big web store known for counterfeit items has them.
  4. consider hook and loop to hold the labels in place if your ammo containers are not especially valuable. I was thinking you could easily swap labels around if the can contents change. For containers going outside the home, I think velcro materials would not be good since they can get caught on stuff and torn off, etc.
  5. If the cans stay indoors and don’t get bashed around much, might be able to use chalk paint and just write the label with colored chalk or one of those chemical chalk pens.
  6. Go old school and put those metal card holders on the cans, then make typed or hand written cards. I used to have a bunch of. brass label card frames that would look pretty cool ammo cans. A crafty family member can make the cards, maybe with a suitable background design on the card stock, such as woodgrain or camo.
  7. To confound miscreants or ne’er-do-wells that might enter your home, don’t label your containers clearly. Use letters and numbers, then maintain a spreadsheet that indexes the labels to actual lists of contents. The spreadsheet can be sorted or searched by caliber, brand, firearm, quantity, value, purchase date, etc. You can make pivot tables so you can only display items related to a particular firearm. Of course the spreadsheet is password-protected.
  8. go super high tech and use little, programmable, LED sign boards that you can program and inventory from your phone. They do actually make LED decals, by the way, so this idea isn’t totally stupid. You can also make an emergency phone app shortcut that turns the LED labels off, or displays misleading labels instead (“cat body parts” or “self-destruct mode enabled”) to stymie the aforementioned villains.

The value of the containers is a consideration. My 50 cal ammo cans are from World War II. Somewhere around here I have a wooden crate from Winchester ammo. Years ago we had a rather large wooden box with wing nuts holding the lid on. The wing nuts were recessed. My parents called this box an ice chest. Only recently did I found out it was about a WWI vintage ammo box of some sort. Wish I still had it.

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I finally got around to labeling my ammo cans! Instead of vinyl stickers, I went with printed tags and attached magnetic tape to the back. Should be easy to move the tags around as needed. I have one plastic 30 cal can I’ll replace with a steel one, I needed to do that anyway since my Liberty Ammo Can is sized to fit 6 50 cal cans and one 30 cal can per shelf as long as they’re all steel cans, the poly cans are just a bit too wide to fit.

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