Wednesday April 16, 2014 Grocery Organization Tip

For the past few years I've been using cloth bags for my grocery shopping.  Nice idea for recycling but they take up a lot of space and need washing frequently.  Going to the store with these made me feel like I was going to the laundry mat with all those cloth bags.  I worked with a volunteer this year who gave me a good idea.  At the resell shop, we would get donated huge garbage bags full of plastic grocery bags.  She volunteered to fold them when business was slow.  It made it so much neater to reach for them when we were busy to put customers purchased items in instead of a wadded up bunch of bags.  I bought Aldi's large plastic bags with handles 10 cents each.  I started folding them and put them in a gallon freezer bag.  I am able to fit about 8 or 9 of those bags in a freezer bag.  So now they are nice and tidy and don't take up a lot of space, fit very nicely in one of my kitchen drawers.  For me, this works out much better than all those cloth bags of assorted sizes and weights.

Oh and at the grocery stores I will let them continue to use their bags (except Aldi's) and I save them in one of those cloth bags with the circles in both ends.  I put the bags in there and then as I need them to pick up doogie poo or take out messy trash or things like chicken bones that I don't want to risk my dogs going in the trash and getting, another frugal solution. I also save some for the cars so when I go to the library and have a lot of books to bring home, I just take one of those in with me and carry my books out in a handy bag.
Hope this helps you to be better organized with your grocery shopping too.

Anna

Anna