The Blog

How many times have I walked into a store to be confronted by the reusable shopping bag display, proudly proclaiming “GO GREEN”?

How many times have I watched some poor woman lug this stack of reusable shopping bags into the grocery store, and thought, “I will NEVER do that.”

Ahem.

I pulled the trigger and finally bought a stack of reusable shopping bags.

I know what you’re thinking.  “You’ll forget to take them out of the house.”  “You’ll never remember to take them into the store with you.”  “You’ll look silly!”

Yes, I’ve thought all that.

Here’s the thing.  I’m not a bleeding heart hippie.  Yes, I’d like to save the planet, but hell, I even live in a town where the sanitary department separates the recycling FOR you.  So I basically do nothing active to save the environment.  So why the reusable bags?  Why the attempt at “Going Green”?

I am Sick And Tired of having all those stupid plastic bags in the house.  Sick.   …and….   Tired.  They take up all this space under my sink.  We don’t reuse them for enough things to go through them in a timely manner.  And they break all the time!

And so, I decided to drop $15 or so and get some bags.  I merely went with the ones offered by my local grocery store.  I picked up 3 regular bags and 2 thermal ones.  5 bags seems to really cover my main twice a month shopping trip.  I picked these up about a month ago.  Since then, I’ve noticed a few things:

1.  These bags take up less room in the trunk of my Forester.

2.  The bags hold more groceries than the plastic ones.

3.  We can get the groceries into the house in fewer trips.

I’ve been so happy with my experiment, that I even bought a reusable bag from Target.  There I get 5 cents off my bill when I use the bag.  It’s better than nothing.   Last week, instead of having 6 plastic Target bags, I walked out with my 1 shopping bag full!

I am all about convenience.

So far, I’ve only actually forgotten the bags 1 time.  That happened to be on a quick run to the grocery store, while I was driving a borrowed car (as mine was in the shop….don’t ask)..  When I’m driving my car, I have my neet little grouping of bags in the trunk.  I just grab out what I need, head into the store….and I don’t come out with all those plastic bags!  And I don’t have those plastic bags taking over my kitchen!

Oh yes…this is a decision that I am currently loving.