My washer runs almost every day--------------so the washing is no problem

I'm with you on the homemade bags that hold more.

I sew the straps with a boxed X pattern so I don't have to worry about them coming loose.

T shirts make nice bags for the mall. So many ways to make them too. Google t shirt bags.

Wow lots of opinions about shopping bags.

I am in BC Canada and one of the big discount grocery store chains has charged for bags since they opened over 16 years ago.

A local chain started to push for reusable bags and got rid of plastic shopping bags all together (except produce bags). You can have paper shopping bags, or use reusable bags and get a discount of 3 cents per bag as well as a monthly draw for a basket of treats. They sell the reusable bags for $1.00 but they go on sale for 25 cents regularly. This store still bags your groceries, will take them to your car and does delivery for seniors and shut ins. Oh and meat is wrapped in plastic to avoid any leaks.

When we shop at Safeway and forget to bring bags from home the clerks only put a couple items in each bag. It is ridiculous.

I have never had a reusable bag rip and spill my groceries, like has happened on more than one occasion with plastic bags.

As far as bacteria goes, do the studies look at where it comes from? Does anyone measure the bacteria load in shopping carts or hand baskets? Everything I buy is packaged or wrapped before I put it in a bag. Once we get home fresh food is washed or cooked before consumption.

Oh and Fabricland, our Canadian fabric chain store charges for bags too.

I deconstructed a bag from Safeway that was made out of some weird fabric that disintegrates when washed. I made my own pattern from that. I have had a blast making lots of grocery bags---in fact my mom and sisters and sisters in law and niece are all getting some for Christmas. They are sturdy and washable and colorful!

I wash my bags, need to remember to bag fresh fruits and veggies in the bags that are at the site for them. there
have been problems with the re usable bags .

Belfrybat..
I used webbing for the straps. Sewed them between the sack and part of the top I cut off, then ran another stitch. They are easy to wipe out and keep clean. Several of my friends have them in the pickup truck for muddy boots, etc.

I have made several of these and really like them since they fold up small to put away or take with you for next use. I do recommend washing after a while since they do get dirty.

I live in Calif. in an area where Wal-Mart doesn't have bags, you can either bring your own or buy theirs. I have dozens of homemade bags and keep them in our cars. My bags are all washable and the ones for meat are made from fabric with a vinyl liner. Bacteria is all over the grocery store, shopping carts, hand baskets, in the crates the produce is shipped in, on the hands of the workers, and the conveyor belt at the checkout. So, if you are really concerned about the bacteria and the bags you should wash all your produce before you put it inthe refrigerator and wipe down all the meat containers, boxes and cans before you store those. Just think, how many times have you been in the store and a child is coughing or sneezing? That's all airborne bacteria and germs landing who knows where. Another thought, do you take your purse into the restroom? If so it's full of germs and bacteria, how many of you go home and put it on the counter or table? I don't think there is an easy way to avoid bacteria and germs anyplace we go.

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I agree the plastic bags are getting thinner and thinner..........I think I will look into making a few of these shopping bags...I DO vaguely remember my grandmother using "shopping bags" along with the little wheeled pusher, since grocery stores were a few blocks away from home....now we need cars to get to shopping centers...........but anyway........my solution to getting those many thin plastic bags from my car (in the driveway) to the house......I have a kids red wagon in the garage, I open garage, get wagon, load from car and pull into garage-and unload there....U ask why not just pull car into garage....well, it is 2 1/2 car and it is pretty much used for "other" things.......overflow storage, a craft table, dog cages, workshop, etc.............I do now use those plastic bags for dog walks, cat litter boxes, small trash containers in bathrooms, bedrooms.........but I am willing to try using a shopping bag........Yes, it is true that in Europe many use those net type shopping bags, but they also go shopping almost daily-in the towns anyway, but those net type bags are great too.

We have a discount market here, "Marcs" that has the big, plastic bags 2/$1.00. They are plastic, though.

Tshirts make some of the cheapest, easiest, and most washable bags. There are many ways of making them. Knit fabric doesn't fray so all the edges don't even have to be finished.

my mother showed me how to fold plastic bags that take up very little space.
lay the bag down and fold in the sides the way they were folded. then fold in half sideways. fold in half again sideways. you should have a long strip. then start at the bottom and fold bottom left corner over to right side. this should form a triangle. then just keep folding right side to left, left to right etc. until you get to the top. the loop of the handles should rap around your little triangle. this lays very flat and doesn't take up much room in your purse or pocket. should be about 4" x 2". hope this helps.

I read that a concentration of bacteria in one place, the bag, is the concern. Machine washing after each use is too much hassle for me. I don't like doing laundry to begin with. I keep a long laundry basket in my trunk to unload the bags from the store. I take the basket in, unload, and return to fill it again. I do everything as simple and stress free as I can. I think it keeps me healthier. I know it frees up tons of time to be quilting!

You are getting ripped off by paying for plastic bags now. They are all biodegradable and simply fall apart in a year. Just try and use one to store something in. You will find your closet, cupboard or attic and confetti mess. I always ask for paper as I use them for many burnt brown bag crafts, paper ribbon baskets and always wrapping paper. They are also used in my waste paper baskets. No plastic in the landfill and I'm not wasting water by having extra laundry and fuller loads to wash cheap fabric bags that don't last 3 mo.

I don't like the plastic bags for environmental reasons, the fact that they're petroleum based, and because they spill all over my truck on the way home from the store. The reuseable bags are more than I am willing to bother with or waste energy on and there's just too much risk of food contamination.

I ask for paper bags, which don't jumble up my groceries or fall over going around a corner, and then reuse them for sorting the stuff I recycle, add them to the compost pile, use them to start lasagna gardens, take them to the food pantry for use by those who need food, just plain recycle them, make patterns for quilts, or any number of other things. I have no plans at all to change.

If you want to kill bacteria in the bags, you don't have to wash them every time you use them. You can put them in the microwave for a few minutes. That kills bacteria on sponges - and toothbrushes.

I guess I'm just old fashioned. Soap and water are not a bother to me. Nor is running a load of dirty items thru the washer.

I gotta do this------------think about this bacteria!

Where in your car do you put your groceries? In the seat? Who sat there last and what kind of germs did he/she have? Even worse, what if a dog's butt was the last occupant?

Do you put your groceries in the trunk? Where you put your trash on the way to the dump? Where you put the fertilize for the garden? Where you put the flat of spring plants?

And bacteria on a washable grocery bag makes you crazy?

Our area charges for bags also. It's annoying because the plastic bags are so thin that they tear apart if you put very much in them.

I do like the Trader Joe bags best, they are a plastic coated something or other, nice and big. They hold much more then what a plastic bag holds. Simplicity has some good grocery totes also. I picked up the patterns when Joanns has them for 99 cents. I use the vegetable bags to bag all my meat also. Nothing goes into the totes without a bag of some type. Then I use the veggie bags for scooping the cat's litter and for big food scraps, bones etc that I don't put down the disposal when I preparing meals.

I've seen patterns for veggie bags out of wide tulle, with a drawstring top-I've never actually seen wide tulle but I'm sure it's around someplace.

It does become second nature to carry bags in the car and into every store when you shop. I visited my parents over the summer and had my reusuable bags with me, Mom was saying , "We don't do that here. Just be normal and get the bags like everyone else."

I was thinking this same thing, but you beat me to it. I would much rather use my reusable bags (some I have made with decorator cotton) that those nasty plastic bags.

Generally speaking, people here enjoy seeing my bags. Except for one checker who looked inside and out of every single bag I had looking for the price tag. @@ She continued looking even after I told her I'd made every one of them. "It's my job!"

Connecting Threads is now selling plasticized fabric for use in raingear. Possibly it would make good bags. I wait until I go to Canada each year and get my grocery bags in the supermarkets. They sell all sizes from 79 cents to $1.

I made some last summer from old t-shirts. Cut the sleeves off, cut the neck hole bigger and stitch across the bottom. T-shirt fabric won't ravel and if you have shirts you really like, now you get to show them off. I know I got the pattern off the internet somewhere you could try Googling it.
kathyd

Or the grocery cart you're pushing around the store putting your groceries into in the first place... Or all they washed hands that touch the food between production until it gets to your shelf.

Go to lazygirl.com. There is a one hour bag there. froggyintexas

The Stop & Shop stores here will give you 5 cents back for each reusable bag you use. We can also use plastic bags at no charge. I use empty dog food bags that I cut up and serge for reusable grocery bags which I wipe out using a bleach wipe. The cloth bags I just throw in the wash.

I do the same, shop once a month and end up with lots of plastic bags. I went and bought small garage cans with lids for our bathrooms and for the kitchen, that the plastic bags fit in just perfect, so now I never have to buy garbage bags, just recycle my grocery bags.

Guess I have lots of bags with lots of bacteria 'cuz mine haven't ever been washed!! I did wash one when I something spilled on it...hand wash???? Not in my lifetime---threw that baby in the machine with a bunch of jeans and it came out just fine.
Again, at our stores these bags sell for 99cents and are worth it.

OK
To solve the issues of plastic bags and shopping bags.
When I lived in Alaska people would knit or crotched the plastic bags that were made into strips by bunching together and then making them into some sturdy bags. You could even do a design with all the different colored grocery bags.

Just had to share.

I think I made my longer too, cut below the crotch. It has been almost 5 years since I made them, I was trying to remember how I did it. Anyway I forgot to mention how handy the pockets are for coupons, receipts, keys and phone as I don't carry a purse. I worked in a grocery store for 16 years, a very high end chain, and I came home dirty every day. Big box stores are dusty and the bottom shelves gets dirt and wax kicked up when they run the buffer over the floors, so they aren't spotless either.

I'm picturing a diaper leak from the kid a hour ahead of me! Nope------------the bags are no problem at all.

There's no way I'm going to use waterproofed fabric when I can use a $5 bag of pants at the last rummage sale (get about 10 pr of pants in one bag). I wash them in the sanitizing wash on my fancy dancy machine the first time out and with towels after that.

Sometimes we get a little paranoid about cleanliness. I've been reading more and more in different places about why our children have so many allergies. They had no opportunity to "play in the dirt". Much of the bacteria we are so afraid of is actually good for us. We shouldn't be killing it.

I have two strong plastic grocery bags that I have been using for more than 20 years. Sometimes they get used several times in one day. The get washed when the spirit moves me. - Not too often.

this wins hands down for the best idea i've seen in a long while. amazing!

thank you!

aileen

I've been using denim bags I made for about 20 years. I guess I was ahead of the curve here. I think I essentially made the pattern up from a regular grocery bag - similar measurements. Very heavy handles, never had a problem. They don't need to be washed often, if something is spilled on one I throw them it in with the regular wash.
I think today I would follow what others have suggested and just buy a bag and make a pattern from it. I wonder how many plastic bags I've kept out of the ocean in 20 years.

I've purchased several of these bags, material, for $1.00. I keep them in great shape and keep them in the trunk of my car after each shopping trip. I also keep a few in my DH truck, in case we need them. Placing them back into the trunk of the car is my greatest challenge! lol We also go to these shows, where vendors provide brochures for home improvements, and they give out free bags, great colors too! Doesn't matter to me if we're helping them advertise!

The very best grocery bags to have are what was used in EU in the 80's...a crocheted, mesh bag. It folds up to nothing so he can cram it in his pocket and it expands to hold TONS without breaking or tearing. Here is a free pattern I looked up for you along with a picture of what I'm talking about. I have all kinds of bags in the back of my car and this remains my favorite. http://theadventuresofcassie.blogspo...ocery-bag.html

For the past few years I have been picking up sturdy tote bags at thrift stores. Many people donate totes they bought or were given and don't use. Many will name places or charities or schools, but they are great for groceries. I have assorted sizes and some with insulation (great to keep frozen items frozen in warm weather). Most are in brand new condition.