Eliminating Evil Plastic Grocery Bags
May 3rd, 2008 by ali
I’m a pack rat. I hesitate to throw things away because "I might need it someday."
I have almost half a closet full of evil plastic grocery bags.
It’s been coming to this for quite a while. I am running out of space in the small hall closet and it is becoming increasing difficult to squish my vacuum cleaner and supplies in there without conking myself on the head and starting a small avalanche.
With my rather large family, I can easily fill ten shopping bags per trip if there’s a good sale and I’m not careful. We recycle the bags as trash can liners and rubbish bags. I try to go "bagless" if possible and use my pretty, purple Chico Bags. Still, the accumulation of bags in the closet is staggering. What can I do with all these evil grocery bags?
The internet to the rescue! There’s a site called My Recycled Bags.com and it has all sorts of ideas for turning the bags into nice looking purses, totes, wristlets, pot scrubbers, rugs and such. The author cuts the bags into strips and ties them together to form "plarn." Plastic yarn. She then crochets the plarn into her fabulous creations. Even better, this lovely lady "Cindy" or "RecycleCindy" shares her patterns for free! How eco-consciously cool is that?!
Making the plarn is easy enough. My challenge is remembering how to crochet. My grandmother taught attention deficit me to crochet and do embroidery (Okay, okay, she tried to teach me!) when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade and I actually crocheted a hot pink poncho some time thereabouts. I attempted a baby blanket when I was in my 20’s and didn’t finish it.
So here I am. My goal is to cut a bunch of plarn and crochet something out of it. I hope to make a bag but may start with something smaller and do baby steps. I’m sure I can find a "How to Crochet" vid somewhere to help refresh my memory. Either way, I’m making room in my closet and easing my eco-guilt.
After all, I can’t just throw them away! What if I need them later?!
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 4:36 pm and is filed under Family, Goals, Simplify, Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 4th, 2008 at 8:13 am
yay you! It’s just like riding a bike, Ali. You’ll figure it out in no time.
>..<
May 4th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
That’s an excellent reuse of bags. People looks at us strange when we refuse bags.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:51 am
@barbara Thanks! Surprisingly, it wasn’t too hard with all the great tutorials and “how to” videos on the net. I went through a ball of plarn the other day and did a few rows of a tote bag. It’s definitely easier to crochet with yarn but I’m happy to re-purpose would be trash into something creative and useful.
@pehea ‘oe The natural food places here are slowly discontinuing the use of plastic bags all together. The general shopping public is slowly catching on and most grocery stores offer cheap reusable bags now but I just needed to get rid of my backlog of saved plastic bags.
May 5th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
They are convenient as well as a nuisance, we at least give them other lives around our house. We bought a kitchen trash can just the right size to use the grocery bags for the kitchen trash. But as less than half our household waste goes into the trash (we recycle everything the county will take) the trash doesn’t use as many as we bring home.
Now if I could just remember to take a reusable bag into the market when shopping…
May 6th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
@Andrew Cooper I have the same problem. The Chico Bags have a clip on them but I don’t know about keeping ten or more of them clipped to my purse!
May 8th, 2008 at 6:18 am
Welcome to the “closet stuffed with plastic grocery bags” club! I have the hardest time throwing those things away. But I try to use them as much as possible. My favorite use is using them as a “garbage bowl” when cooking — you know, like Rachel Ray! Instead of using an extra bowl that I have to wash, I use a grocery bag to put all my throw-away stuff like vegetable ends, chicken trays, vegetable peels, etc. I know it’s not really recycling, but at least it gets used a second time.
I like the crochet idea. I picked up crocheting again this last winter. Managed to actually finish one scarf. Make that one UGLY scarf! haha
May 8th, 2008 at 9:29 am
@Kalei I use them as garbage bowls, too. Well, at least for the meat trays and things we cannot compost. There’s over a year’s worth of bags accumulated so even if the county bans the plastic bags, and I hope they do, we’d probably still have garbage bags for over a year!
The crocheting is going well so far. I should be putting up some pics later.