Or neither. I've started using my own bags for grocery shopping. I bought one of those "green bags" for $1 at a store and then realized that I had a closet full of regular old totebags. I didn't have a whole lot of use for that many bags, and they were just in the way. Indeed, when Hurricane Katrina brought a lot of refugees to Austin, I happily unloaded several years' accumulation at the convention center, glad to get rid of them, glad that someone could use them. Like tribbles, totebags seem to multiply in my closet. Why spend money to buy new ones when I have so many already?
I've wagged these bags around to all sorts of stores in both Houston and Austin. Once in a while a young'un will not quite know what to do with them, but mostly the sackers have been very helpful and cooperative in getting my stuff loaded up. Even with a heavy load of cans, the totebags are easier for me to carry than either paper or plastic since I can use my shoulders to help carry the weight.
The down side of all this green shopping is that we are not getting as many paper sacks as we used to. Those sacks were useful for trash, for taking loose items to Good Will, for sending home extra groceries with the grandkids. I've even used grocery sacks for moving, finding them handy for packing towels and some clothing. We can see our once huge stock of paper sacks now dwindling. We have to think twice about letting go of one.
We still seem to get a lot of plastic bags. I sometimes do forget to bring the totebags in from the car. My Prince doesn't have a supply of totebags yet and doesn't seem inclined to borrow mine. Some stores get alarmed when you come in with an armload of bags that are not clearly shopping bags. Fortunately, HEB (here in Austin) will recycle plastic bags; we have been gathering them up and taking them to the bins at HEB for some time now. I can see, however, that there might come a day when these too are scarcer.
I wonder if we will then start reminiscing about the "good old days" when we had abundant plastic bags for table scraps and shoes and impromptu diaper bags?
2 comments:
mjI now love the tote bags, if I just would remember to take them. I always have too many plastic bags. I do use them in my bathroom trash can, but others will just sit & be collected. The cashiers sometimes don't know what to do with the totes. The paper bags are good if they don't get messed up when you bring them home. They do fold away nicely, I like the totes now and try to remember to take them with me to the store.
Moolady
I forgot the bathroom can liner use for leftover plastic bags. The things really are handy--if we just didn't get so many.
Remembering the totes is indeed the issue, and, for me, getting them back to the car is also an effort. Once we bring them into the house, loaded with groceries, it might take a few days to get them unloaded and returned to the vehicle. It's a definite commitment of time to do this.
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