Do you have the dreaded “box of pens and markers”? Who knows which ones are dry and which ones work. You pull one out… dry. Another one… dry. You pitch each one until you finally arrive at one that works.
It would be nice if there were a way to quickly pick up a Sharpie that you know is more likely to work.
I recently bought a box of fine-tip Sharpies. I didn’t want to go through this game again. On the box I wrote the date. Now I will know how old the markers in this box are.
But let’s take this a step further. How to identify each Sharpie’s purchase year…. I tried writing on the side. That wipes off. I tried scratching the year into the side of the Sharpie with an X-Acto. That proved illegible.
Then I came up with the idea that might just work. I dabbed a bit of white-out on the end of each Sharpie. Then I wrote the year on the white-out. Now each Sharpie carries its own little birth certificate.
Bonus tip: when marking a fresh box of markers, you don’t have to pull them out one by one. Just open the bottom flap of the box and mark all the ends in one swoop.
We’ll see how this experiment goes. Will the white-out flake off over time? Will knowing the year even matter, since some Sharpies dry out faster than others regardless of age? Maybe not. But it’ll still be fun to watch, over the months and years, just how long each Sharpie really lasts.
(and if you like that idea, I do something similar whenever I install a new light bulb: I write the day of installation on the bulb’s base.)