Plastic bag storage... kind of random, I know

Plastic shopping bags.
Wow. Those things are soooo like Tribbles!

This is kind of how I felt when I would open the in the broom closet that the shopping bags were in:

James T Kirk - Star Trek Original Series - The Trouble With Tribbles

About 10 years ago, I made this out of a tea-towel:

Plastic bag dispenser made from a tea-towel

The above image is my actual plastic bag dispenser. Ideally, it would always look like that. Trouble was, there were always more shopping bags than there was room. The dispenser would end up over-flowing, and I would end up having it, as well as plastic bags filled with plastic bags in the broom cupboard.

It was a total mess!

I searched around on-line for ideas about storing plastic bags and found many about folding plastic bags. The idea intrigued me.

This is pretty much what happens (click on the images to view larger versions):

1. Take a plastic bag, and flatten it out as much as you can, getting rid of any air trapped inside:

Flatten out plastic bag

2. Fold bag in half, straight down the middle, horizontally:

Fold in half horizontally

3. Fold in half again, edge to edge, horizontally:

Fold in half again horizontally

4. Take the bottom corner and fold it up at an angle, so that the end is aligned with the edge:

Fold the bottom corner up at an angle

5. Fold over so that the corner meets the edge:

Fold the top corner over to align with the edge

6. Fold over again so that the corner meets the edge:

Fold over again

7. Keep repeating this, until you reach where the handles start:

Keep folding until you reach where the handles start

8. Carefully fold until you match the bottom corner with the top edge (and there is approximately 7.5cm [or 3 inches] of handle protruding:

Fold the bottom corner upwards to meet the top edge

Bottom corner folded up to meet the top edge

9. If the handle protrudes out a little far, you may need to fold it back over approximately 2.5 cm (1 inch).

You may need to fold the handle back approximately 2.5 cm (1 inch)

10. Fold the bottom corner up:

Fold the bottom corner up

11. Turn it around, so that the point is facing away from you, and lift one layer of the folded bag up. It should look a little like a pocket. Push the folded handle into the 'pocket'.

12. Push it all the way in..

13. A nice, neat plastic bag.

14. A basket-load of plastic bags.

I tuck that little basket in my kitchen drawer along with wraps and freezer bags. When the above photo was taken, there were 65 plastic bags.

I have now whittled that down to 10.

I have found that by having them in that basket they are used far more often.

I am now trying out Baggu re-usable standard size shopping bags that I purchased from eBay - I like them a lot better than those big non-woven 'green bags' you can get from Coles, Woollies, Aldi, etc, as they fold down a lot smaller.