# He wrote a repair log on a surface nobody else looks at

> A tin lid pencilled BOUGHT 1971, MENDED 1988, MENDED 2004 in the same fading hand — a service history kept where only the next person to open the tin would find it.

August 19, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/the-price-written-inside-the-lid

Three lines pencilled straight onto bare metal, the same hand each time, the ink lighter with every
line: BOUGHT 1971. MENDED 1988. MENDED 2004.

Nobody was ever meant to read that but him. That's exactly why he wrote it there.

## Why write a date on the inside of a lid where nobody will see it?

Because the record wasn't for anybody else — it was a note to the next person who opened the tin,
and that person was usually him.

The outside of a tin gets a maker's name and a picture of biscuits. The inside is blank, which makes
it the only surface on the object that's actually his to use. Writing there instead of on a label
stuck to the outside means the note survives handling, survives a wipe with a damp cloth, and stays
private in a way that costs nothing to keep private — it isn't hidden, it's just not addressed to a
stranger, in the same way [the meter cupboard holds figures nobody reads but the household](
/stories/numbers-inside-the-meter-cupboard).

## Why do the two mended dates matter more than the bought date?

Because each one marks a moment when throwing the tin away was on the table and lost.

Anybody can write down when something was bought; that's a receipt, and receipts are common. A
mended date is rarer, because it only gets written if somebody first decided the thing was worth the
trouble — solder, a new hinge, whatever it took — over just buying another one for less than an
hour's wage. Sixteen years between the two repairs is sixteen years the tin kept being the answer to
that question.

## What do the gaps between the years actually tell you?

That the tin wasn't failing on a schedule — it was being used hard enough, and for long enough
between repairs, that each mend was a genuine decision rather than routine upkeep.

A thing mended every year would read as fragile. A thing mended twice in over three decades reads as
something built well enough that its failures were rare and worth fixing when they came. The
thirty-three years from the first line to the last aren't idle years; they're the years the tin did
its job without needing him at all — a slower, sparser system than [the spike that catches every
receipt as it comes in](/stories/he-keeps-the-receipts), but built on the same instinct to
keep a written trail.

## Who has the right to keep a log like this?

Anybody who owns the object — a pencilled date inside a lid takes nothing from a design, a maker's
mark or anybody else's work.

The tin's own printing belongs to whoever made it, and this piece leaves that alone entirely. What's
printed here is the private addition made afterwards, in his hand, on the blank metal that came free
with the tin. A shirt can carry that mark plainly because it was always his mark to make.

### Why has almost nobody kept a log like this since

Because almost nothing left is built to survive being logged.

A soldered tin, resoled boots, a re-tinned pan — these were worth a note because a mend genuinely
extended the object's working life by years. Most things bought new now aren't built with a repair
path at all, so there's no second date to write, and the habit had nowhere left to attach itself. It
didn't stop because people stopped caring. It stopped because the objects stopped asking for it.

## Does it work for something bought last year instead of in 1971?

Yes — the shirt just carries whichever dates are actually true, even if there's only one line on it
so far.

BOUGHT 2025 on its own is a fair start to the same record, and it reads the same way: not a claim
about age, a note that somebody intends to keep the thing long enough for a second line to matter —
close cousin to [a date pencilled onto a jam jar the day it was filled](
/stories/jam-jar-label-and-date). The habit is the design, not the number of decades behind
it.

## Does it print well?

Yes — three short lines of plain lettering on a flat ground survive a print run without any detail
to lose.

Pencil-on-metal has a natural unevenness [worth keeping rather than smoothing out](
/stories/numbers-as-a-design) — the later line fainter than the first is part of what the
design says, and a hard-edged single-colour treatment holds that difference without needing more
than one ink.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the object at [JustOG](/) — what it is, the year it was bought, and what got mended when.
Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to
order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Nobody has opened that lid in years. The dates are still exactly where he left them.