Number 9 and 10 are things that go together because they both live in the garage. Which is kind of a dusty, cluttered place. Along with hosting cabinets of tools, the lawn mower, a generator, a Rubbermaid lawn can full of scrap wood, buckets of rags, a bicycle, an inversion table, and about ten plastic bins full of my parents' possessions, the garage is where the dirty laundry and the plastic bags pile up.
I'll get to laundry in a moment.
Do you know anyone who doesn't have superfluous bags stuffed around the house? We use green, cloth grocery bags, and we still have too many plastic bags. It seems like where two or more are gathered, they reproduce.
I used to store smaller bags in a bigger bag from Sears or Kohl's. Eventually it would rip and the inside bags would float to the floor and drift around. They were a nuisance.
Then, I got one of these...
It's a bag holder from Ikea. I saw one at a friend's house and tracked down an Ikea shortly thereafter. It's basically a hard plastic tube with holes that screws into the wall. Bags get stuffed into it, but they can't just fall out. It streamlines the puffy, haywire mess that copious, plastic bags create.
Bag storage becomes manageable, because this holey tube sets a boundary. Without boundaries, plastic bags can become codependent and clingy, and then you have a whole other problem.
When the tube gets full, I take a wad of sacks to the grocery store recycling bin. Which is usually stuffed as well. Plastic factories don't need to manufacture any more plastic bags. There are enough on the planet to simply recycle and redistribute. Just pass them around, and don't make anymore. Like fruitcake.
I'm told this bag tube isn't a new item. I'm just late in discovering it, I guess. It's one of my best buds.
I met my other garage buddy years ago when my youngin's were in elementary school. This sticky product was the only thing that would remove ballpoint pen ink from school clothes.
It used to be called Spray and Wash and came in a thick cylinder, like a big glue stick. Now it's called Resolve and looks like deodorant. I love that you can smear it on a stain, then toss the item of clothing into the basket and wash it up to a week later. I don't know how it works, but it does.
I've never met a (new) stain Resolve did not remove. I've been using it for twenty years. And I resolve to use it the rest of my life. If they ever quit making it, I'll be up a creek without a paddle.
In stained clothes.
But my plastic bags will be contained.
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