How to Store Those Pesky Plastic Bags

What do you do with all of the plastic bags you get from various stores? Do you throw them away? Recycle them? Reuse them for other purposes? 

I have reusable grocery bags for grocery shopping, but I often forget to bring my reusable bags when shopping for other items like clothing, household goods, etc. So, I end up coming home with a plastic bag or two. It gets stashed in our cleaning closet in the kitchen and begins its journey of annoying me indefinitely. Our local grocery store does accept these bags for recycling, but I always forget to bring them with me and I do use them occasionally for tasks like emptying the kitty litter box or transporting items from one place to another. 

At this point, I feel they are an evil that I will not be able to get rid of completely, so I needed to come up with a better way to store them. Enter my DIY plastic bag storage container project!

In my collection of empty glass bottles and various other containers, I found this coffee can. I kept it because I figured I could use it for something worthwhile instead of recycling it. I pulled out a scrap piece of paper from my craft paper collection and cut it down to the height of the container. 

Using permanent spray adhesive, I sprayed the back of the paper and carefully adhered it to my coffee can.

Done. It's that easy. Then, I grabbed my stash of plastic bags. I got rid of the ones with holes in them and the ones that were extra large. They never seem to get reused at our house. The rest got stuffed into the coffee can.

I put the container in our bottom kitchen drawer next to the trash bags.

Now, those pesky bags are out of sight and out of the way of annoying me, but still there should I need one. An easy and free solution - my favorite type!

How do you corral your bags - or avoid getting them in the first place?

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