Beware of Bags

We have all got them – bags. Grocery bags. Gift bags. Reusable bags. They come in all sorts of handy shapes and sizes, don’t they? And they can be oh so useful! However, I want to warn you ~ beware of using bags for organizational storage…

Before I get too high on my horse, let me just preface this by saying that I do have a bag problem. I am only stating this because my husband reads my blog, and will give me grief if I don’t make mention of it. The issue is this: milk bags. A couple of years ago our church started collecting milk bags, which you can crochet into sleeping mats (details on how to make these mats can be found here). These mats are then sent off to developing countries. They’re great because the bugs don’t lay eggs in them, like they would a wicker mat. Anyway, it takes about 300 milk bags to make one mat, so we started collecting. And, boy, did people give! Please see below:

 

 

I have been working on this mat for too long, but I will get it done – promise. Then I’ll finish the other half completed mat I have 🙂  (Please do not give me any more milk bags – I’m drowning in them…)

Anyway, back to my warning. I have found that a lot of people store things in bags. The trouble with this is “out of sight, out of mind”. I found this myself just a couple of weeks ago. I had a plastic bag on the floor of the living room for a couple of weeks. I walked by it twice a day, easily, without giving it a second thought. However, when I went to look inside of that bag, I realized that I had a proper place to store some of the contents, and the rest of it was rubbish (to be recycled).

If we’re trying to do a quick cleanup of our home, it may seem like the simplest solution to simply take everything and tuck it away in a grocery bag, with the intention of sorting through it at a later point in time. However, when an item is in a bag, that “later time” is put much farther off. And keep in mind that plastic bags do deteriorate over time. Leave them for too long, and you’ll have a big mess on your hands.

So please, please, don’t store items in bags. You can label them all you want, but I can guarantee you that most of what you have in there will be useless within a month. If it was important to you, you would have found a proper home for it. How many bags do you have in your home? How do you use them up?

Things to do with your old bags:

1. Take out the trash.

2. Take the dog for a walk, or clean up the backyard.

3. Use it for the green bin (Toronto).

4. Give a few to a friend with a dog.

5. Give them to your local day care – they often send home wet clothes with the children, and need something to put them in.

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