Label your stuff

Photo by Girl with red hat on Unsplash

This article was originally published in Castanet Jan 23, 2026 

(Some links are included for convenience, but I’m not paid or compensated for any of them)

Do you remember your mom sewing your name in your shirts before you went off to camp? Let’s make a New Year’s resolution to label our stuff. This will give us some peace of mind, and use an ounce of prevention to prevent a ton of cure. If you have a loved one, there’s no better present you could give them than to run down the list and set them up for a successful year. 

Your phone—Replacement cost more than $300. Protect it for free. (Your health, priceless) 

Two quick steps make your phone returnable and could possibly save your life. If you log into your Apple or Google account, it will show you a map of where your phone was the last time it checked in with a tower. The website can override vibrate or silent, so the phone emits a loud noise. But don’t let that stop you from going old school. Write your email, or an alternative phone number on a piece of paper and use cellophane tape (which is remarkably water resistant) to tape the number between the phone and the phone case. (Don’t write your phone number. If you have lost your phone you won’t be able to answer it.) The old school method works even if your phone is out of power, broken or lost hiking. 

Your phone can function like a medical alert bracelet. Even without unlocking the phone, you can hit the “emergency call” feature. On the next screen there is room for an emergency contact name and phone number and a button for “medical info”. There, you can specify medical conditions, life-threatening allergies and current medications. One advantage over the bracelet is there is more room for text. I’m on a unusual medication, where a drug interaction could be fatal, so I have my medical condition, interaction symptoms and standard medical treatment available under “emergency call”. 

Your bike—Replacement cost between $300 to $15,000. Protect it for free, track it for $40 

Law enforcement officers in B.C. recovers thousands of bikes a year they cannot return because they have no way of tracking the owners. Take five minutes to register your bike with Project 529. https://project529.com/. If you cannot find a serial number on your bike, you can pick up a Project 529 Shield sticker with a unique number for free at the Penticton Bylaw Office at 284 Main Street in Penticton between 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday to Friday (or you can buy one online for $16). 

You can also use an AirTag ($40) to track a stolen bike. You can set up an AirTag if you or a friend has any kind of Apple device, a phone, laptop or tablet. The trackers work via Bluetooth. If you mark an AirTag as lost, it will “ping” any Mac device which comes in range and sent you a location notification. Android-based versions work less well because it is a smaller network.  The network is stronger in places with more Mac devices per square kilometre, like Vancouver, but there are several Facebook reports of AirTags locating lost items in Penticton. Look up instructions on how to conceal an AirTag on your bike. 

Your keys, $200 to $800 to replace. Protect it by donation. Pet tag $13, track it for $40 

To keep your keys you have three methods. The War Amps have been returning Canadian keys since 1946. For a donation, they will give you a tag for your keys. If your keys are lost, the finder can call the 1-800 number or drop the keys in any mailbox. It takes two weeks to a month for the keys to be mailed back to you. 

A more local solution is to put an engraved pet tag on your keys with a phone number or email address. It costs about $13 to engrave a tag at Petsmart, Total Pet, or Bosley’s. 

Lose your keys in the house? An AirTag can make them beep so you can find them, as well as using Apple’s “Find My” tracking network (described above). 

Your pet—Irreplaceable. $25 for reflective, breakaway collar and an engraved tag 

Let’s talk about cats (much of this applies to dogs). All cats should be microchipped, vaccinated, and spayed or neutered. But a collar with your last name (skip the cat’s name, they don’t read) and phone number is still essential. 

People make arguments against collars:

My cat is microchipped so it doesn’t need a collar with ID

If you had your cat microchipped as a kitten, and then moved without updating your information, the microchip won’t be useful (some owners never completed the microchip information, so the database has a number, but no contact information at all). Not everybody has access to scanners. Collarless lost cats are often informally adopted by cat lovers as “strays.” Bodies of dead pets may be buried by well-meaning people. In all of these cases a collar with ID trumps a microchip. 

In BC you can update your information by logging into the BC Pet Registry: https://bcspca.my.site.com/bcpetregistry/Comm_General_Public_Owner_Login using the "Reset Password" button. If you don't get a password via email, contact them at info@bcpetregistry.ca to reactivate your account.

My cat is an indoor cat, so it doesn’t need a collar with ID

The average lifespan of an indoor cat is 10-17 years, more than twice as long as an outdoor cat. However, indoor cats go missing at the same rate as outdoor cats, and because they don’t have the same outdoors skills, are less likely to be found.  

Cats shouldn’t wear collars because they can get snagged and strangle the cat

Any animal control officer will tell you they find very few cats dead from strangulation and many, many, more from other causes. All cats should wear a collar. A breakaway collar prevents strangulation accidents. 

In most places the risk to outdoor cats and lost cats are evenly divided between being hit by vehicles and killed by wild animals. (A reflective collar can help prevent vehicle strikes.) In the Okanagan, we live so close to nature, wild animals are the bigger problem. We tend to blame coyotes, but the birds of prey (owls, eagles, and hawks) are powerful and efficient predators. 

Protect your cat with a reflective, breakaway collar with an ID tag with your contact information. If you are putting a collar on a kitten, as they grow, check regularly to make sure you can easily slide two fingers under the collar. 

Your car—$15,000 to $80,000 to replace. $40 and up, plus subscription fees of $10 to $40 per month 

My sister recovered her stolen car, in a big city, because her kids backpacks were in the trunk with AirTags. A step up would be a GPS tracker which doesn’t require a phone in the vicinity. There are GPS trackers designed for bikes and cars. Some car trackers need to be installed (using the car battery for power) while others are magnetic, and need to be retrieved and recharged. Because they don’t depend on phones wandering by, GPS devices provide more robust tracking than AirTags, especially in rural areas. However, GPS trackers do require a monthly subscription ranging from $10 to $30 per month. They can return a lot more information than just location, such as speeding, sudden acceleration and braking, cornering too fast and crashes. GPS trackers are often used for company vehicles and by parents of young drivers.

Articles on Logical Point of View by Kristy Dyer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may reprint this as-is for free.  Contact me to request changes. Images belong to the original artists.