Are You a Thread Head?

 

The lat­est pod­cast show by the Thread Heads over at Thread­Banger is all about reusable shop­ping bags, one of my favorite sub­jects. Just ask any­one who has had to endure my inces­sant ram­blings about using them when I explain the great plea­sure I get every time I walk out of a store with my bags in hand. It did take me awhile to learn to bring them with me on shop­ping trips but now it has become a force of habit. I now remem­ber before I leave the house to bring my bags with me and you must form a habit of bring­ing them into the store with you as well. One of my local gro­cery stores used to give me $.05 off my total shop­ping bill for each cloth bag I would bring to put my gro­ceries in so that was a big help and a great reminder. They have just recently changed to giv­ing me points on my fre­quent shop­per card but it is still an incen­tive. I do find that if I have my bags with me at all times that I use them every­where I go. I love telling the cashier at any store I shop at, with a smile of course, that I have brought my own bag. It just makes me feel good and makes me feel like I am mak­ing a dif­fer­ence, how­ever small.

 

I have all sorts of dif­fer­ent bags. I have sev­eral Clas­sic String Bags and also a cou­ple of Pro­duce Bags. I have started a col­lec­tion of health food store reusable bags which are usu­ally made of can­vas. When­ever I go to a new health food store I always pick up a bag with their logo on it. I have one from Green­life Gro­cery, Nature’s Food Patch, Earth­fare and Whole Foods Mar­ket. My Whole Foods bag is so big and durable that I have used it like a back-pack to lug my stuff around. I haven’t picked up any chico bags yet but I do plan to get some of those awe­some bags at some point in the future. They are very con­ve­nient and com­pact so you can stuff them in your car so you don’t for­get. The other reuasable bags I take with me on shop­ping trips are just can­vas bags I have col­lected over the years with var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions logos on them. I have cus­tomized some of them by paint­ing or sewing over the logo. A friend of mine made this bag com­pletely from scratch.

 

One of the orga­ni­za­tions men­tioned in the Thread Head pod­cast was Mors­bags whose goal is social guerilla bag­ging. They give you a pat­tern for a really sim­ple to sew bag and give out their labels in print­able .pdf form, then you give away the bags you make for free usu­ally on a day set by the head orga­ni­za­tion. I really like this idea and so much so that I cre­ated a pod for my area called BlueRidge­Bags so if you want to make some with me con­tact me through the mors­bags site.

 

Other links of interest:

One Bag at a Time

She’s A Betty: Reusable SHop­ping Bag Guide

Reuasable Gro­cery and Shop­ping Bags Blog

Reuse This Bag

Feed Projects link via The Daily Green

Bags On the Run

U-HandBag Blog: Tuto­r­ial for mak­ing a reuas­bable bag with comfy handles

 

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