Organizing Recyclable Plastic Bags

Recyclable plastic bags don’t always get reused right away, so they accumulate in the dark recesses of your kitchen cabinets. And when it’s time to reuse, you “ukay-ukay” (dig) into them frantically looking for the right size bag for your purpose. It’s like stashing your underwear in your drawer without folding and then rummaging through everything looking for that particular piece you want to wear. No offense to folks who choose this kind of excitement but, to me, it’s an inconvenience (yes, I fold underwear).   

This was my stash of recyclable plastic bags before I found a way to organize them:

I figured that all I needed was some simple manner to quickly identify the bags, keep the same sizes together, and make them quickly accessible for reuse. So, let’s see what we have around the house. Aha! A stash of empty tissue paper boxes. (Hah, I bet you were sure I had those piled somewhere.)

  

Now to put up a grid to identify the bags. I’ll need a piece of paper as large as the largest recyclable bag I have in the stash (could’ve recycled a brown paper bag but I had just cut up the biggest one in my pile into a costume pattern). I sorted the bags according to size (I was surprised there were only five universal sizes) and drew the measurements onto the paper to serve as a handy guide. Then I taped the paper to the inner side of the cabinet door.

I labeled five tissue boxes accordingly, and slipped the bags into their respective storage containers. And there they are!

Now it’s a snap to put away the bags and pull out the right-sized bag for the purpose. No more unsightly stashing, fumbling, and rummaging. Recyclable bags organized. Just like my underwear.  

Upcycled Pot Holders

When you realize that you didn’t pack pot holders when you relocated from the other side of the planet, you quickly make some by repurposing a couple of face towels that you did pack a lot of.  

To make the pot holder different from the face towel, I decided to hand-sew the seams, creating a pocket to slip the hand in. And I hand-embroidered these: “POT HOLDER” and “PAN HANDLER.” Catchy.

Problem solved.

Dice Pouch Project

The challenge was to make several pouches for an assortment of board game dice. The pouches would be given away as tokens to fellow gamer friends. The options for the material to use were paper, netting, suede, felt, or any kind of fabric that would serve the purpose. Nothing too fancy; after all, the pouch just needed to hold seven regular-sized dice.

After pulling out a number of drawers of materials I could use, I remembered that I had scrap leather from an old jacket I bought at a garage sale. It’s genuine leather that has natural wear and distress. And even though the scrap pieces are relatively small sections, they would be just fine for the size of the pouches. This was what I had been waiting for -- the chance to recycle/repurpose that old leather jacket!

I went ahead and made a prototype – two sewn-together panels with holes for a pair of drawstrings. It came out really nice!

Because the scrap leather had been in storage, I decided to give each section a good cleaning. We keep a bottle of leather cleaning and polishing solution for our boots, bags, and other leather goods – I put it to really good use!

After the clean-up and polish, I traced the pouch panel pattern on the leather. Because the leather’s wear patterns were not uniform, I made sure that the paired panels came from the same swatch or were at least similar in discoloration. While scissors were good for the panels, the rotary cutter was most efficient for cutting the drawstrings.

Punching the holes was next.

Then I just sewed the panels together, smooth side in, and pushed the seam to flip the panels smooth side out. It’s with projects like this that I’m glad I have a heavy duty sewing machine.

What I like about leather is you don’t need to worry about the edges fraying -- construction of the pouches was quick and trouble-free.

What took the most time was threading the drawstrings. A crochet hook would help, but I discovered that a pair of tweezers made the job pretty easy.

And here are the leather pouches, ready to be filled with dice. Mission accomplished.

Snack Chopsticks

My son grew up in front of the computer. The mouse and keyboard are extensions of his arms. So if he needs to eat while interfacing with his tech, which he does all the time, he needs to be able to put food in his mouth without dirtying his typing/gaming fingers. While a spoon and fork work with most food stuff, they’re not really efficient for snacks like potato chips and cheese curls.

I wouldn’t doubt that my son thought of this first, but yes, he uses chopsticks to eat snacks when multi-tasking with tech.

Pretty soon, I was using chopsticks too while working on my articles and blogs (I actually have a snack set beside me right now). This blog is not about using chopsticks – I bet everyone already knows that. This is about how to reuse the chopsticks.

You’ll notice that only the tips of the chopsticks get dirtied by the cheese curls. And when you don’t care to finish the whole bag of snacks, you close the bag (or plastic container) and throw the wooden sticks away (no, you don't want to reuse some old and nasty cruddy infected stick tips!). So you’ll have to get a new set of sticks for the next time you feel the urge for salty cheesy snacks. Ergo, you’ll need a lot of chopsticks on standby.

Of course, you can get a pair of metal chopsticks (which my son gave me some time ago -- he had a spare), and you can wash them after every use. But if you don't want to have to bother about washing the sticks, or you only have those sticks they give out at the Chinese restaurant, then here’s how to make the most of the wooden sticks -- without having to leave your workstation.

Cut off the dirty tips with a pair of cutting pliers, pruning shears, or a cleaver (you should have one of these implements in your workstation drawer so you won’t have to stand up to get it). 

Feed the newly-cut tips into your pencil sharpener (also a mandatory implement in your work area).

And there you have it – a clean pair of wooden chopsticks for your next cheesy snack.

Tip: It’s okay to pull out a new set of whole chopsticks when the reused ones are already less than three inches long.