Watching Over the Ways: Plastic Bags

Plastic bags (also usually referred to here as "Wal Mart bags", haha) are something I used to struggle with. I would love to be good and take reusable bags to the grocery store, and maybe one day I'll get me act together and start doing that, but I don't right now. I get 417 plastic bags every time I go to the store and then I want to keep them, but I don't want plastic bags all over my house! I finally figured out something that has been working for us for a while.
I like for our spaces to be pretty, yet functional. The picture below is in our laundry room. The nice basket was a gift from my mother-in-law when I graduated high school {almost 14 years ago! My husband and I had just started dating..}. That's where I keep our plastic bags now. They are easy for adults to reach, but not children. They are in plain sight, but, at the same time, you can't actually see them. It makes me happy.

This is what the bags look like all shoved down in the basket.

My mom used to always fold her bags like this, so I guess that's why I do it now. They take up less room than just shoving them down, and I believe they are not nearly as dangerous for little ones when folded like this. It would take a special child to undo a bag and put it over his head if it was tied this way.

You basically just make a slip knot.

I still have the issue of having far too many bags to fit into my nice basket, but I don't want to just throw them out. I have tried to put them in our recycling bin and they don't accept these bags - seriously!? So, here is what I do with extra bags that I don't want all over our house:

I keep several bags in the trunk of my car. Wet clothes, dirty diapers, just gathering trash on a road trip...it seems like I am in need of a plastic bag fairly often while in my car. I do shop at Aldi occasionally and since they do not have free bags, I carry some in with me then as well.
I drop some bags off at the recycling area in my grocery store. There are usually specified areas to recycle these plastic bags.
I put these bags in our small garbage cans in the bathrooms and the kids' rooms.
On a daily basis, I usually have a bag hanging from a doorknob both upstairs and downstairs. I use it as a trash bag and between diapers, junk mail, and dryer lint, I usually fill two of these up each day. I take them outside to the trash can when they get full and hang another up. This keeps stinky stuff out of our house and it also keeps me from buying big trash bags nearly as often. It also seems like these smaller bags fit better in the large outside can, so it doesn't fill up before trash day as often. It's my personal form of recycling and it works quite well for us!