3:10 p.m. - 2008-11-20
Mama's got a brand new bag
GROCERY DAY.....
I did my weekly grocery shopping today. I usually do it towards the end of the week. When I was working, I shopped on Friday after work. It made the weekend fun if we had some special snacks. I can still remember how excited my son would be when I got home. He would help me unpack the groceries so he could see what I had purchased just for him. Usually it was cookies or frozen pizza or maybe some chips. He loved grocery shopping day for sure. He told me once that it was his favorite day!!!! Of course, he was about 11 years old at the time.
For the last few years that I worked, I had Fridays off. So, I continued my Friday grocery shopping but did it in the morning. I really enjoyed shopping more because I could take my time, the store wasn't as crowded and I wasn't as tired.
Now I have switched to Thursdays for the most part, leaving Friday for the day I clean the house. Over all those years, the grocery bags have changed from paper sacks to plastic.
I always liked the Kraft brown paper bags because I could use them for other things. I could wrap garbage inside, use them to cover packages being mailed. I could cut them up for my son to draw on when he was a child. Lots of uses for them. You can drain fried foods on them, cool freshly baked cookies on them, use them as wrapping paper for a cute gift, put old newspapers in them to be put in the trash. They folded up neatly and could be stored under the sink or in a pantry.
Then along came plastic.
Plastic is used by every store you can imagine. Businesses like the phone company deliver new books in plastic. The newspaper is delivered at home in a plastic sleeve. Plastic is everywhere. I used to like to keep the different colors we might get on occasion. I don't know why but I liked the colors. I guess it made the bag seem more special somehow.
I used a lot of the colored plastic bags for gifts. Of course, the regular plastic bags are great for garbage, potato peelings and other food prep. Anything wet or smelly. banana peels, coffee grounds, pieces of onion, spoiled food, and so on. And how many of you still have a huge number of plastic bags stuffed in one of those kitchen holders.
In our area, the new thing is to use canvas bags for grocery shopping. In fact, the store where I go most often sells their own bag for 99 cents and gives you a 5 cent credit every time you use the bag.
You can purchase all kinds of bags to use in place of plastic. They are sturdy, they hold a lot of items, they are easy to put into the trunk of your vehicle, they can be used in many different ways.
I find that the more I use my fabric bags, the more I like them.
It's really fun to look for unusually patterned fabric bags...and....if you are crafty at all....you can probably make your own.
