# A fuse taped to the door long before it's needed

> One glass fuse taped inside a cupboard door with its rating written by hand beside it, kept ready years before any circuit actually trips.

August 22, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/the-spare-fuse-taped-inside-the-cupboard-door

One glass fuse, taped flat by a single strip of tape crossing its middle. Beside it, in charcoal,
two lines written by hand: SPARE. 13A. Nothing else is printed anywhere on the shirt.

It's been there long enough that nobody remembers taping it up. It's just there.

## Why tape a fuse to a door instead of keeping it with the rest of the spares in a drawer?

Because at the exact moment a fuse is needed, a drawer asks for two things a door doesn't: knowing
the spare exists, and knowing which drawer.

A cupboard door gets opened most days for something else entirely, which means it's already in
front of whoever needs it, torch in the other hand or not. The fuse taped to the inside of it isn't
filed — it's placed exactly where the next person to need one will already be standing.

## Why write the rating next to it instead of just taping the fuse up?

Because SPARE and 13A do the sorting a mixed tin of odd fuses would otherwise ask for by eye, in
bad light, in a hurry.

13A is the rating already fitted in most of the plugs around an ordinary house, which is likely why
it's the one that ended up kept spare rather than any other size. The two words written next to it
aren't decoration — they're the difference between reaching for the right thing without thinking and
holding a fuse up to a bulb to squint at a number stamped in the glass.

## What's the actual discipline here — taping the fuse up, or doing it before anything's gone wrong?

Doing it now, with nothing prompting it.

There's no trigger for a taped-up spare fuse — no dead socket, no flickering light, no reason that
particular afternoon. That's what separates it from a repair: it gets done at the one moment nothing
is asking for it, which also happens to be a moment there's still time to do it properly rather
than in the dark with a torch wedged under one arm.

## Do I need permission to draw a taped fuse and handwriting like this?

No. A plain glass fuse, a strip of tape and handwritten capitals belong to nobody in particular.

If a specific manufacturer's fuse casing or printed packaging were being copied exactly, that
artwork would be theirs to license. Drawn plainly, with an invented hand rather than a traced one,
this is just an object being drawn accurately. Style has no owner. A work does.

## Does the same taped-up habit make sense for anything besides a fuse?

Plenty. A spare bulb taped inside a lampshade, a spare washer taped inside the cupboard under a
sink — anywhere a small part fails rarely enough that buying one "for later" only works if later
you can actually find it.

It's the same instinct that [labels a freezer bag in a private
code](/stories/the-freezer-is-labelled-in-code) rather than trusting memory, scaled down to
one object and one strip of tape. A [fuse box diagram that lists what breaks if each circuit
fails](/stories/fuse-box-diagram) is the same idea run across a whole panel instead of a
single spare.

## Isn't a fuse taped to a cupboard door just clutter on an otherwise clean surface?

Clutter is stuff you don't know is there. This is the opposite of that.

It's placed so precisely that finding it takes no memory at all — only knowing the door is where
it lives, which is [the same job a written record inside a cupboard is already
doing](/stories/numbers-inside-the-meter-cupboard) elsewhere in the same house.

## Does a small taped object like this print well at chest size?

Yes, as long as the tape reads as a flat overlay with a clean edge rather than a soft photographic
gradient, and the handwriting stays bold enough that SPARE and 13A hold their shape instead of
filling in at the weave's floor.

One charcoal ink on a bright ground is enough — [simple, confident shapes are what survive being
printed small](/stories/bold-shapes-survive-fabric), and a fuse this size is a small print
carrying a lot of the reading on two short words.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the fuse at [JustOG](/) — what's written beside it, what it's taped to, what colour it's
against. 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).

The tape's gone a little cloudy at the edges. The fuse underneath hasn't moved in years.