Our plastic bag situation was getting out of control. While I am highly in favor of reusable grocery bags, it's very handy to have a stash of bags around for walking the dog and garbage bags. Also, I forget them in my car a lot. However, a reasonable sized stash of bags has ways of taking over spaces. I've done some crafts with plastics before:
plarn baskets,
pot scrubbies, and even some full on purses with plarn (eeks! Must get a picture!) but I've never made anything to control the stash. I once posted on my college message board that I was looking for plastic bags and ended up going to an apartment that had dedicated the entire area under their sink plus a few other cabinets to plastic bags. They were trying to be responsible and not throw it away, but they clearly needed to stop collecting bags. My mom used an old cardboard container, an old roommate bought a plastic ikea contraption, and until a few weeks ago, we were using a wicker basket.
The basket had issues. Namely, it didn't fit well near the door and bags tended to float out of it when it got too full. I thought about buying something, but since I have free fabric, why not use it?
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| bags easily come out the elastic bottom |
I used
The Accidental Crafter as my technique guide for properly casing the drawstring and elastic and wound up with something that matches the cover I made for the
dog bed, pops on my white/cream walls, and fits perfectly in narrow space by the door.
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| drawstring doubles as a way to hang it to the wall. |
The drawstring top allows us to periodically add bags to the holder easily and the elastic bottom allows us to draw out single bags as needed when headed out the door when an excited pup in tow.
Were I to do it again, I would reposition where the drawstring comes out because I have a prominent seam right in front that I am not a fan of looking at all the time. Alternately, I could add a ribbon/band between the seams so that the seams are on the side instead of lazily using my drawstring as the hanger. Also, I would loosen the elastic at the bottom to a size I could more easily fit my wrist in to grab bags that are stubbornly not falling to the bottom. It works as is, but one of these days I'm probably going to get annoyed and fix that.
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| awkward narrow space + tall, narrow bag holder = awesome |
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