Thursday, January 20, 2011

10 Ways to Re-Use a Paper Grocery Bag

It's been a few months since I have written any new "10 Ways to Re-Use a..." posts. I think that's a long enough break - time to start up again. :)


So, let's start with paper grocery bags!

1.  Kindling for fire (camp fires, stove fires, etc.).

2.  Make crafty hats for kids.

3.  Book covers. I used to make these when I was in junior high and then decorate them with doodles, stickers and sayings. It was the "cool" thing to do.  I found this tutorial on YouTube:

4.  Make puppets and/or masks.

5.  I use these bags as garbage bags for our burnable garbage. That way we can just throw the whole thing in the burn pile.

6.  I've cut them up and used them as wrapping paper. The kids love decorating the wrapped gift.

7.  If a frost is coming and you still have green tomatoes in the garden, you can pick them and put them in a paper bag in the house. My mom has done this for as long as I can remember. Apparently they ripen better/quicker in a paper bag than on a shelf.

8.  I have seen people make some pretty neat luminaries out of them. I've never done it, though.

9.  Use them to clean artificial flowers and leaves. Just place the fake plant in the bag with a little salt, close the bag and shake it, shake it, shake it!

10.  While you are shaking it, you could also throw some potato slices in a bag along with some seasonings, close and shake. Woohoo! It's a do-it-yourself Shake n Bake.


How about you?  What ways do you re-use paper grocery bags?

3 comments:

  1. Wow..you clean artificial flowers and leaves?

    I loved making bookcovers out of paperbags. We would all draw all over and sign each others books. I'd take a paper bag bookcover over a store bought one any day.

    And I use them for kindling quite a bit. Instead of shredding our old bills and important papers...we burn them...We toss them inside a paper bag...when the bag gets full...it goes into the fire pit!

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  2. We use our paperbags for recycling. Then when it gets full, we just throw it in our recycling bin that goes out every Wednesday. I like the book cover idea. Haven't done that one in a long time! Luminaries...wow, would love to see how that is done.

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