The Case of the Missing Onesie: Labeling Items for Daycare

If I had a dollar for every item my kids lost at daycare, I’d be a rich woman! When your kids are little, so are their things. Socks, pacifiers, and clothes are easily misplaced.

That’s why it’s SO important to label everything well. Most daycare centers also have requirements for labeling your child’s items. 

You don’t want to spend your precious free time labeling items for daycare, though. I remember trying to write my baby’s name in Sharpie on all of her clothes the night before her first day of daycare. I didn’t get very far! I definitely do NOT recommend that method. 

Over the 7 years my kids were in daycare, I learned a few tricks. I know a thing or two about labeling items for daycare! It’s not difficult but it helps to have a system. 

Labeling clothes for daycare

It’s important to learn how to label clothes for daycare if you want to hang on to your kids’ items. Clothes can easily get mixed up in bins or bags. Hats, coats, and mittens are also hard to keep track of. Older children can help identify their belongings, but babies and toddlers can’t do that. So you need to label items for daycare thoroughly! 

Using a Sharpie to label clothes

I did try writing my child’s name on the tags of her clothes with a Sharpie, but that was not a good method. It’s hard to fit an entire name on a clothing tag, and even harder to write on the clothing itself. I would say that using a Sharpie is an emergency way to label items. Don’t rely on it for every day. It takes a long time and will permanently mark the clothes. 

Name labels for daycare

I highly recommend buying name labels for labeling clothes for daycare. After trying a bunch of different options, my favorite daycare labels are the NameBubbles small round clothing labels. These personalized labels come with your child’s name and you can choose a cute design.

I like these small round daycare labels for a few reasons. First of all, and most importantly, they stick. I’ve washed these clothing labels many times and only a handful have come off. They’re also the perfect size to stick on a clothing tag. The labels will also stick directly to fabric (although they stay a bit better on the tag).

Stick-on labels for daycare items are a great option because they’re quick to apply. You can easily label 20 items or so in just a few minutes. I recommend putting the name labels on a tag in the clothing if you can. 

A few hacks for daycare name labels

There are a few things I wish I’d known the first time:

• Don’t put the clothing labels for daycare over the clothing item’s size. It will be annoying to try to remove the label and annoying to not know the size. 
• If your daycare OKs it, buy labels with your last name only. This helps with hand-me-downs, and you only have to buy one set of labels.
• If you can’t do last name only labels, just put a new name label on top of the old one when an item is passed down.  
• You need small stickers to label clothes for daycare. Bigger labels won’t work well. 

How to label socks for daycare

I have a simple and easy solution to labeling socks for daycare: don’t. You’ll lose baby socks everywhere so don’t even bother. 

I recommend dressing your baby in a footed onesie for daycare until the weather gets too hot or your baby starts walking. When you start sending your child in socks, buy inexpensive socks in bulk and don’t be surprised when your baby routinely comes home missing a sock. Socks just aren’t worth the effort to label and keep track of in my opinion!

Labeling bottles for daycare

Oooo boy does it get confusing to label bottles for daycare. Collectively, my children have attended at least 4 different daycare centers as babies and every place had different rules! It can be really hard to figure out how to label baby items for daycare but bottles seem to be the most challenging. 

In general, most places require the following information to be on the bottle:

• Baby’s name
• Date
• Whether it’s breastmilk

My strategy was pretty simple. 

First, affix permanent daycare name labels to the bottle itself AND to the cap

I have lost so many bottle caps over the years. Make life easier for your daycare providers – and yourself – by labeling both pieces of the bottle. It’s hard to label the ring and nipple. I never did that because our daycares did not take the nipple off of the bottle for any reason. They would just remove the bottle cap. 

You can also pick a color theme for your bottle name labels. My youngest daughter’s daycare assigned a color to each child, which was super helpful for the teachers. They knew that my baby was purple, another was blue, and so on. 

Second, apply date labels

I like having a label maker because it was a little quicker than using tape. Print a date label for each bottle you’re sending that day usually 3-4) and put it on the bottle. The date only needs to go on the bottle, not the bottle lid. 

You can also use masking tape or painter’s tape and a sharpie for the date label. I did this occasionally when my label maker was acting up, but I found that the tape leaves more residue on the bottle than labels from a label-maker. 

Re-writable daycare labels are also a good option for bottles. The Namebubbles write-on labels are waterpoof and reusable! If you don’t want to waste labels from a label-maker, write-on bottle name labels could be a good alternative. 

Don’t forget to label your bottle cooler, too! With multiple cooler arriving at daycare each day, you definitely want to avoid a mixup. 

How to label bottles of breastmilk for daycare

Your daycare will also probably require breastmilk to be labeled as such. One daycare center my daughter attended provided red bands to put on the bottles indicating that the bottle contained breastmilk. If you don’t have something like this, you can also make a label that says Breastmilk. 

In addition to labeling bottles of breastmilk, I added a few more labels to help manage pumped milk supply:

• Bottle Number: I labeled the order I wanted the bottles used in so I could manage my pumped milk storage. For example, if I had some milk that was pumped four days ago, I wanted it used that day. Milk pumped 2 days ago would last a few more days. 
• Pumped Date: I also included the pumped date on a bottle of breastmilk. This would tell me whether an unused bottle could be sent again the next day or needed to be frozen. Breastmilk is good for up to four days in the refrigerator. Note that if I mixed milk from different pumping sessions, I would use the oldest pump date. 

My milk supply was barely sufficient, so I really needed to closely manage the bottles I was sending. If you’re pumping plenty of milk, you may not need a system like this. But if you’re barely keeping up, you don’t want to waste any liquid gold! 

How to label diapers for daycare

Ask your daycare how diapers need to be labeled. Some only ask that you label the plastic sleeve of diapers. In that case, it’s super simple to write your child’s name in permanent marker on the plastic. If you’re using cloth diapers, or daycare wants each individual diaper labeled, it can get a little more complex. 

How to label disposable diapers for daycare

My oldest attended one daycare that asked us to label every single disposable diaper. It was a little annoying, but after a while I got to be pretty quick at doing this. 

To label diapers quickly, try to keep them in the plastic sleeve for easy transport. Take some scissors and carefully cut around the top of the plastic sleeve to expose the crotch of the diapers. They should still be compressed enough to stay in the plastic but you can label the diapers.

Just go through the diapers one by one and initial the crotch of the diaper with a sharpie. It’s kind of like leafing through files in a file cabinet, and it goes pretty quickly. 

How to label cloth diapers for daycare

You can label cloth diapers like you would label clothing. You want something that won’t come off with washing and is easy to apply. Although using permanent marker on the tag works, a washable daycare name label on the tag works best. Don’t forget to label any accessories you need to send, like your wet bag. 

How to label pacifiers for daycare

If there’s one thing you don’t want babies sharing it’s their pacifier! Ironically, pacifiers are small so they’re hard to label and easy to lose. Depending on the type of pacifier your baby likes, you have a few options:

• Personalized pacifier clip: These are so cute! If they work with your baby’s preferred pacifier, and daycare allows it, they’ll help you and daycare easily keep track of pacifiers. 
• Daycare Name Label: You might be able to use a small label on the pacifier – just stick it on a relative flat spot. 

How to label baby food for daycare

If you’re sending prepared baby food to daycare, you’ll just need to label the items with your baby’s name. Since the containers won’t be re-used, I wouldn’t waste a name bubble label on them! Just write your baby’s name on the contained with permanent marker or use tape and a marker. 

For homemade baby food that you’re sending in reusable containers, use a stick-on daycare name label on the container and the lid. You’ll also want to identify the contents and date with a label maker or write-on reusable label. 

How to label items for daycare

When you’re sending your little one off to daycare, and can feel super daunting. Not only are you getting into a whole new rhythm after maternity leave, but you suddenly have all of these logistical items to keep up with, too! 

Ask the daycare providers about labeling requirements and write them down in one place. Most likely the rules are on different pages throughout the parent’s manual where you will never find them. Make yourself a cheat sheet for those mornings when you’re 1000% exhausted so you don’t have to think too hard. 

Finally, don’t worry too much about lost items. Stuff can be replaced. My motto is: if I or my child would be sad to lose something, it does not go to daycare.