Pro Tips: Labeling
Part 3 of our blog series “Camping Pro Tips” is all about labeling! With over 95 years of experience, we have collected all the tips, tricks, and secrets to making getting ready for camp exciting and fun.
At Camp, everyone is so busy moving from activity to activity all day. Sometimes when we have a schedule full of fun all day like that, it’s natural to accidentally misplace one of your belongings. Because our camp is so large and so much happens in a day, it may seem like once something is misplaced, it is gone forever. That’s not necessarily the case and our staff work incredibly hard to find the owner of each lost item. These pro tips should help ensure our campers leave camp with everything they brought with them.
Labeling
The easiest way for our campers keep all their belongings is to label all of their belongings – every single item. This includes clothes (even socks, underwear and shoes), towels, cameras, and any other possessions you sent to camp. Labeling can be as simple as writing your camper’s name (or first initial and last name) on tags of clothing, or you can purchase labels with your camper’s name on them. We have two preferred vendors that you can purchase labels through: Mabel’s Labels or Label Daddy, both of which carry a wide variety of sewn, iron-on and sticky labels, and both of whom donate a portion of all proceeds back to Camp Chi.
Name it and Claim it
Our new system for lost and found this summer is called “Name It and Claim It”. Very simply, if everything comes to camp labeled, when it is lost, it is very easy to return to it’s owner. A simple concept we know, but one that only you can really make happen by LABELING EVERYTHING. One of the most common places our campers leave their belongings is at their specialty activities. Caught up in the fun and excitement, campers often leave sweatshirts, towels, and more behind after a fun hour of specialty. When items are left there, one of the staff members brings them to the lost and found where each item is carefully searched for a label. If one is found, the item is sorted into the correct village bin and given to the village leader. If one is not found, the item enters the world of “unlabeled lost and found” (dun dun dun…), where every camper can look through and claim what belongs to them. If the items are labeled, it is really easy to return them. It is also really important our campers know to tell their counselor they lost something. Once we know what we are looking for, it is much easier to find it.
It’s always disappointing for campers when they think they lost one of their belongings, especially because it’s not as easily replaced while at camp, depending on the item. Hopefully, our Pro Tips on labeling will help get your camper’s misplaced items returned to them quickly and easily so they can swim with their goggles or throw on their favorite sweatshirt and get on with camp fun! Stay tuned for more from our Pro Tips blog series.