Bless Your Books Blog

By Courtnee Turner Hoyle:

Some people are lucky enough to have stacks on stacks. I have bags, on bags, on bags.

Did you sing it? If you heard the song in 2011, it’s likely you did.

Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.

As a good Southern girl, I learned to keep any useful thing. In one of my other blogs, I talked about using food containers to store other foods, like stuffing a butter container with leftover mashed potatoes.

In addition to saving money on plasticware, I reuse plastic bags. Most of the time, they line my trash receptacles.

I got the idea from my grandmothers. They both used them in their bathroom trash cans. The bags were a perfect fit, and they didn’t have to waste money on trash liners.

Why don’t I use recyclable bags? Well, I had two, and I plan to use reusable bags in the future, but my small children used them for sack races, so the integrity of the bottoms were severely compromised.

So, for now, I use the bags from the supermarket and discount stores to line my trash cans. I have a bag to hold my bags, and it is in one of the kitchen cabinet spaces.

I live in a household with six other people, and I must buy food for them, so the bags accumulate. The children need clothes, and stores frown upon people when they see them trying to carry out clothes without bags (they generally mutter something about the likelihood that the clothes were stolen), so more bags pile up.

When an entire cabinet is full of plastic bags, I take them to the recycling station at a local supermarket. It makes me feel better to know that they will be recycled instead of contributing to my country’s landfills.

Did your parents or grandparents use bags from the store as trash bags? Do you continue the practice?