How Many Unlabeled Keys Do You Own?

1917 Key Duplicator Machine

Key fobs. Key cards. Kitchen Drawers. How Many Unlabeled Keys Do You Own?

Eleven years ago we moved into a house that has a different key for every door. The previous owner taped keys to all the doors so we’d know we had a key for each door and which one it belonged to.

After my mother moved out to live her last six months with my brother, I started cleaning out drawers.

Reminded of having had to go through my mother’s things to shut down her apartment and move her into our house two years before, I didn’t want my children to have to go through every drawer, trying to decide if there was anything they needed to keep.

Where Do Your Spare Keys Go?

Our kitchen has a drawer where all the extra keys go. Perhaps you have such a drawer

These are keys you are afraid to throw away because you might some day figure out what they go to. But, years go by and you still don’t know what they’re for.

Suitcases, long since replaced
My old typewriter case from college
My mother’s cedar chest.

I even have those little circle pasteboard labels with aluminum rings to write labels on and attach them to the keys.

But, you need to know what to write on the labels.

Keys Have Changed

I have key fobs for cars. They have electronic chips in them making them pretty distinctive among keys and expensive to get copies if you lose them.

You can’t just go to the hardware store and have them make you an extra set.

It’s been a long time since I was handed a key in a hotel. They have switched to keycards, the size and shape of a credit card, because they are much cheaper to replace when guests forget to turn in their keys.

The flat metal keys that populate the bottom of my kitchen drawer became popular in the early 1900s, when key duplicator machines became widely available in hardware stores, after the machine’s U.S. invention in 1917.

Are all your keys labeled?

How will your grandchildren know which ones to keep?

Could you label them now if you had a lazy afternoon in front of the fire to do it?

Are you willing to throw out the ones you don’t use?

Do you have a key that has a particular memory or story behind it?

Click here if you would like to read more stories about how the world has changed to inspire you to write your own autobiography for your grandchildren.

To you and simplifying your life for your grandchildren.

Carol Covin, “Granny-Guru”

Author, “Who Gets to Name Grandma? The Wisdom of Mothers and Grandmothers”

http://newgrandmas.com