I love these!

Do you have a cabinet filled to overflowing with those flimsy plastic shopping bags? Well, I do too, but they will be going away with this year's Passover cleaning! And I won't be accumulating more, either...I've discovered these fabulous shopping bags at Fred Meyer!

When the stores all started coming out with the fabric-type reusable shopping bags, I bought some of them - heck, they were only 99 cents a piece. But, I hated them! They just are too flimsy to work well, not to mention the fact that my kids threw a couple of the plastic bottom inserts away (they don't work well at all without them!) So, back to the regular plastic bags I went, but I hate them...don't we all?? They rip at the most inopportune times, if you load them too heavy, just carrying them could cause great discomfort for your hands. But, I'm sure I don't have to tell anyone these things; we ALL hate these bags!

I had been attracted to the brightly designed tote bags made out of tarp-like material, but didn't buy any due to the cost (they wanted $8 per bag for the large ones, $4 for the smaller...too much, in my view!). While on the Biggest Road Trip Ever last spring, I splurged and bought a small one to hold all the 'extra' goodies we were taking to the many gathers we were attending. The bag held up great! As a matter of fact, I still use it all the time to take things to the post office.

When I noticed that those wonderful bags had gone on sale at 50% off, I bought a couple of the large ones, just to give them a try. I love them! They are still a little hard to manuever at the self-checkout, but well worth the effort! They are much larger than the standard bags, and bigger than the fabric-type bags. They are stiff and heavy duty...I can really load them up! I guess they kind of remind me of the paper bags we all used to use...you can load up your groceries so neatly. That's a good thing for this ex-boxboy! lol!

I now own enough to accommodate the Thursday shopping day with stops at Fred's, Wally's, and Costco (I don't even get boxes at Costco anymore, just bag it up at my car!).

Morgan says some of the designs are for old ladies, but I don't care. They are wonderful, fit nicely in the trunk and it takes less trips into the house because they are bigger. And, my hands don't hurt from carrying too many of those stupid plastic bags at one time...come on, we all do it!

At Fred's, they give you a 20 cent discount (per bag) for bringing your own bags, but that's not much of a motivator for me, I guess. I heard a rumor that at some point stores will not provide plastic bags for our purchases, but I don't know how they can do that, in practicality. I also saw that Los Angeles may ban plastic bags in the future, but how would that work? (Does that count Ziploc bags?? May it never be!)

So, there's my review of the reuseable bag scene. I guess I look like a 'green' old lady heading out of the store with my reuseable totes...until I get into my gas-guzzling mom-mobile!