It depends on which store and how I’m getting to the store. If I’m on foot, car, or bus, I’ll usually bring a bag. If I’m taking a bike, I’ll usually just use the free bags. Once in a blue moon, I’ll shop in our sister city, where plastic is banned, and then I usually don’t have a bag at all. I hate shopping there.
They’ve been charging for bags where I live for a long time now. I keep a ton of bags in the trunk of my car because it pisses me off to pay 10 cents for a shitty paper bag.
@Kidsandliz I have a Rubbermaid pooper scooper that uses plastic trash bags. They slip into the bucket and the handles loop over the catches on the sides.
I’ve been using canvas bags for groceries for more years than most of you have been alive. I used to have to explain them if the grocery store was one I hadn’t been to before; that changed sometime in the eighties, I think.
In the long ago times, when I was a little girl, groceries were put in a box (and the boys that loaded your purchases were called box boys, for that reason). The boxes were usually from items that had arrived at the store, and many people (my mother included) would bring the box back, and use it again, for a time or two.
They’d cut them down for this purpose. I went looking for pictures of box boys, or at least groceries in boxes, but gave up.
Florida still has free plastic and/or paper bags. But we still keep about a dozen totes (some of them are fuko bags) in both the truck and the car. Each vehicle also has a freezer bag.
@RedOak Never been to Audi? Not only do they charge for bags, they require a deposit on the shopping carts. Most of the groceries are cheaper, of course, but you can tell they run on the margins.
@RedOak I buy up & up vanilla scented kitchen trash bags from Target. They fit my tall trash can and they smell great. Better than name brand ones I’ve bought elsewhere.
I couldn’t have a tiny trash can in the kitchen. Sometimes I think I’d probably have to take it out multiple times a day if I did. But I use grocery bags for all the little trash cans in the bathrooms etc. But sometimes my wife throws them out and I have to restart the collection.
I’ve had several Audis and they were pretty nice - but I felt a bit “entitled” driving them.
As to detestable Aldi, our experince has been so poor there that we no longer go.
Wretched produce, inferior store/no-brand products, poor selection and poor service.
I kid you not, our Aldi check out clerk abandoned the register in the middle of checking us out to body-check our, 11-year old at the time, son away from an abandoned cart he noticed and intended to return for the deposit. Really, it was battery.
And why buy from German-owned Aldi (yes, I drove Audis, but they were good) when we have the wonderful regional chain, Meijer, that is based in our state?
Meijer has wonderful produce, priced right, solid store and national brand products often on loss-leader sale, pleasant service, and their excellent Mperks reward system that brings our grocery cost down further. And no-charge grocery bags that, unlike the rice-paper Kroger bags, are good kitchen garbage bags.
@djslack being cheapass, we like no-charge garbage bags - why pay? 'Not fans of Target either. As to capacity - Meijer bags are not “tiny”…
We strive not to waste food.
We don’t like leaving what stinky (if it isn’t stinky, we eat it!) food we throw out in the kitchen for more than a half-day anyway.
We recycle, so that pulls a lot of “kitchen volume” out of the “garbage” stream.
So we don’t mind taking garbage-filled grocery bags out to the “naked” (no garbage bag liner required) garbage can outside a couple, sometimes three times per 24 hours.
When I was living in Italy (30+ years ago) everyone used plastic mesh net bags for shopping. They expand to hold an astonishing number of things. I still have mine, somewhere, but the BoC and meh fuku/fuko bags are my favorite now.
@OldCatLady Really? Not only do we live in the same city today, we both lived in Italy over 30 years ago. My second visit there was the three years 78 to 80. Lived in Naples for 3 years the first time then came back to the states and then Scotland then Gaeta Italy for 3 more years (6 years in Italy total). I think my time in Gaeta was the best time of my life.
I usually put them in the car then over time they all migrate back into the house and a few times I have to buy bags then eventually remember to put the increased pile of bags back in the cars and the cycle begins anew.
We get an occasional brown paper bag for our recyclables (paper, cardboard, cans, plastic, glass, etc.) and the plastic bags we use for the small trash cans in the bathrooms and living spaces. The ones we don’t use are taken back to the store and we include other plastic bag type items. The store gets reimbursed for recycling what we can’t put in our own recycling bins. We have tried the reusable bags, but other than my Mom, we suck at it.
@awk Does that mean you order your groceries online and then pick them up at the store? I don’t do that with all the fruits and vegetables that I buy. Prefer to pick all the food myself because I wouldn’t want a bunch of green bananas or squished ones either.
There was one time in my life where my anxiety was so bad that I considered a service to do this for me and then deliver them to my house. But I’m on medication now and grocery shopping at regular stores is one thing I can do. I’d only consider ordering online if my anxiety gets worse one day.
@cengland0 I was surprised at the good quality of the produce I got when I tried this with walmart. Even the bananas, which I’m super picky about, were what I’d have chosen myself. I asked for 3lbs of tomatoes and got a 4 pack in cellophane that weighed a little more for the 3lb price. Unblemished, perfect tomatoes. I was really happy with it. I am a loss leader shopper though, I plan my menus around the ads, and none of the stores here that do loss leaders have grocery pickup.
@awk My local grocery store uses paper bags for pickup. I don’t use the pickup service, though, because I like walking through the grocery store and being around other people.
@cengland0 I used to worry about produce, but I’ve ordered groceries at the supermarket, through Jet.com, and from a local produce box subscription and I very rarely got something I’d consider bad.
At the local store’s web page each item has a note attached to it so you can specify what you want (eg “one bunch yellow with no spots, one bunch green”).
At the moment I order almost everything from Jet except fresh produce, frozen stuff, liquids, heavy things, etc. I still want to wander around and “shop” which is hard to do online. But online is great when you’re buying from a list.
I have about 15 of them. Used to keep them all in my car and always have them with me. For a while now (since getting a new car) I keep forgetting them because I don’t have as much trunk space and have other stuff there for the grands sports thingies. I do prefer them tho… they hold more, easier to carry in the house and the grocers actually have to think about how their putting the stuff in there and distribute the weight more evenly.
It was hard to remember to bring bags to the grocery store at first but it’s become a habit that I feel good about now. Next I need to learn to keep a bag with me for those quick stops at other stores. I was going to use a tshirt bag but I love those ChicoBags @SSteve !
I always use the plastic bags, and every 10th trip or so (because I never remember), I’ll stuff a couple of them, full of about a million others (as well as deflated packing air bags from Amazon) into one of the recycling bins at the front of the store.
I have reusable bags and use them nearly every time I go to the grocery. I hate having to dispose of/recycle them, and a good fabric bag has no problems carrying a lot of canned goods. Plus, the fact that many of mine are made from old jeans is a good conversation starter; the people working checkout are always happy to see that I have remembered my pants!
I have usually remembered to take enough bags back out to the car to do it.
I use the Trader Joe’s canvas bags, which are very strong and can hold a lot of stuff. I’ve priced buying similar bags, and it’s cheaper to get the Trader Joe’s ones, although I rarely go to Trader Joe’s (due to proximity more than anything else).
It’s more convenient for me to use them. They hold a lot and don’t rip. I toss them in with the laundry every now and then.
I do put meat and produce in plastic bags first, usually the little ones that are in the meat and produce sections.
And I bag my own groceries, because apparently grocery store employees who can efficiently bag is a thing of the past.
Spotted a new thing at the local coöp this weekend, a take-a-bag-leave-a-bag sort of thing for when you’ve forgotten to bring one. Grab one out of the bin with the implication being that you’ll bring it (or another) back next time. Good for dumping all the totes folks get as promotional items as well.
As far as the question, I can’t really fathom forgetting to bring a bag as it’s part of the conscious decision to go grocery shopping for me. I have, of course, wound up at a grocery store unplanned and therefore bagless.
@medz In extremely limited places, none of them grocery stores. Even if it were widespread, just bring bags unrelated to that store, or buy bags on etsy or chico bags or whatever.
@moondrake I like the idea of that, but I’d have to take everything out to scan it, then put it back in. For my needs I don’t see that as an advantage over just bagging at checkout.
It would be great if I could scan the food as I put it in the cart, though.
@craigthom I rarely use self checkout as it’s such a pain for produce. I figure I can leave a gap between the bags of items on the conveyor and hand the bags to the clerk in the desired order to have them reloaded in the order I want them sorted. I might use more than two twice a year, though.
@craigthom Sam’s has that. They call it scan and go, and you scan and pay with an app on your phone.
The other day at a local Walmart they had a bunch of scan and go terminals being installed where some registers were. I’m curious if that’s the same thing or just confusingly named.
I have bags the fold into a pouch that I carry in my purse at all times. I even have some little mesh bags for produce!
I am getting better. Considering I live in California, I need to get better about it, tired of paying for bags.
@ConAndLibrarian they started doing that at a store where i live in nh .10 a bag! Screw that!!
@ragingredd that’s cute
It depends on which store and how I’m getting to the store. If I’m on foot, car, or bus, I’ll usually bring a bag. If I’m taking a bike, I’ll usually just use the free bags. Once in a blue moon, I’ll shop in our sister city, where plastic is banned, and then I usually don’t have a bag at all. I hate shopping there.
They’ve been charging for bags where I live for a long time now. I keep a ton of bags in the trunk of my car because it pisses me off to pay 10 cents for a shitty paper bag.
I use the plastic ones from the store when I clean the dirt box. Can’t do that with a reusable bag.
@Kidsandliz Well, you can, but you probably don’t want to reuse it for groceries after that.
@Kidsandliz I have a Rubbermaid pooper scooper that uses plastic trash bags. They slip into the bucket and the handles loop over the catches on the sides.
I’ve been using
totesshirts for bags since the California ban took effect 11 months ago.https://meh.com/forum/topics/reusable-shopping-bags
7 cents per bag in chicago… Gotta bring the bag everytime. Not paying for plastic bags.
I’ve been using canvas bags for groceries for more years than most of you have been alive. I used to have to explain them if the grocery store was one I hadn’t been to before; that changed sometime in the eighties, I think.
In the long ago times, when I was a little girl, groceries were put in a box (and the boys that loaded your purchases were called box boys, for that reason). The boxes were usually from items that had arrived at the store, and many people (my mother included) would bring the box back, and use it again, for a time or two.
They’d cut them down for this purpose. I went looking for pictures of box boys, or at least groceries in boxes, but gave up.
@Shrdlu that’s how it works at Sam’s club, except no boys. You gotta get your own boxes from the big bin they dump them in by the checkouts.
@Shrdlu Our Costco will box your groceries, but they get kind of heavy. Sometimes I have to rebox them to get them in the trunk.
I end up forgetting the bags and when I do get plastic I use em for cat litter
I just grab a bunch of extras from the meat and produce depts while I’m shopping.
Right now I use the plastic bags from the grocery store for trash and cat litter. When I have an overabundance, then I’ll bring my bags.
@RiotDemon I have a diaper pail with a wastepaper basket bag in it for the litter and put it out once a week. Much less plastic. no smell.
@callow I have 4 cats. The bag would be really heavy and likely rip out were I to do it that way.
Florida still has free plastic and/or paper bags. But we still keep about a dozen totes (some of them are fuko bags) in both the truck and the car. Each vehicle also has a freezer bag.
We usually remember them at the checkout.
/giphy D’oh
I just put them back in the car after I put away the groceries.
@Luko26 This. Plus, using your own bags lets you bring insulated bags for the frozen stuff.
@Wormwood You can bring one anyway. I do that here where basically no one uses reusable bags (actually on really hot days a cooler too).
@Luko26 This is where I fall short. It takes a while for them to return to the car, and then placed in the trunk. Out of sight, out of mind.
What the heck? If a store around here charged for bags, they’d very quickly find their store empty of customers. We use them as kitchen garbage bags.
What do you all use for kitchen garbage bags? Do you buy then too?
@RedOak I use the full size trash bags. I don’t have a tiny trash can in a cabinet.
@RedOak They give me money for using totes which is the same as charging you for bags. The stores won’t empty.
@RiotDemon so you have a huge garbage can in your kitchen? Wouldn’t work in our small kitchen.
Due to the grocery bags we don’t need to buy or use large garbage bags at all. The full grocery bags go directly into the garbage cans.
@callow but they don’t charge us for bags… nor credit us for not using them.
@RedOak Never been to Audi? Not only do they charge for bags, they require a deposit on the shopping carts. Most of the groceries are cheaper, of course, but you can tell they run on the margins.
@RedOak I buy up & up vanilla scented kitchen trash bags from Target. They fit my tall trash can and they smell great. Better than name brand ones I’ve bought elsewhere.
I couldn’t have a tiny trash can in the kitchen. Sometimes I think I’d probably have to take it out multiple times a day if I did. But I use grocery bags for all the little trash cans in the bathrooms etc. But sometimes my wife throws them out and I have to restart the collection.
@djslack what do you fill it with, food?
@alphapeaches pretty much everything goes in the main kitchen trash can so it fills up fast some days. It’s kind of central to the house, I guess.
@Wormwood sounds like they run on cart and bag charges…
@RedOak My bad. They’ve been paying us to bring bags for so many years in PA that I assumed it was everywhere now.
@Kidsandliz Quarter in to release the cart; you get your quarter back when you return it back to the cart corral.
It only costs you if you don’t return your cart.
@Wormwood
I’ve had several Audis and they were pretty nice - but I felt a bit “entitled” driving them.
As to detestable Aldi, our experince has been so poor there that we no longer go.
Wretched produce, inferior store/no-brand products, poor selection and poor service.
I kid you not, our Aldi check out clerk abandoned the register in the middle of checking us out to body-check our, 11-year old at the time, son away from an abandoned cart he noticed and intended to return for the deposit. Really, it was battery.
And why buy from German-owned Aldi (yes, I drove Audis, but they were good) when we have the wonderful regional chain, Meijer, that is based in our state?
Meijer has wonderful produce, priced right, solid store and national brand products often on loss-leader sale, pleasant service, and their excellent Mperks reward system that brings our grocery cost down further. And no-charge grocery bags that, unlike the rice-paper Kroger bags, are good kitchen garbage bags.
@djslack being cheapass, we like no-charge garbage bags - why pay? 'Not fans of Target either. As to capacity - Meijer bags are not “tiny”…
So we don’t mind taking garbage-filled grocery bags out to the “naked” (no garbage bag liner required) garbage can outside a couple, sometimes three times per 24 hours.
When I was living in Italy (30+ years ago) everyone used plastic mesh net bags for shopping. They expand to hold an astonishing number of things. I still have mine, somewhere, but the BoC and meh fuku/fuko bags are my favorite now.
@OldCatLady Really? Not only do we live in the same city today, we both lived in Italy over 30 years ago. My second visit there was the three years 78 to 80. Lived in Naples for 3 years the first time then came back to the states and then Scotland then Gaeta Italy for 3 more years (6 years in Italy total). I think my time in Gaeta was the best time of my life.
@cengland0
/giphy eerie
I usually put them in the car then over time they all migrate back into the house and a few times I have to buy bags then eventually remember to put the increased pile of bags back in the cars and the cycle begins anew.
We get an occasional brown paper bag for our recyclables (paper, cardboard, cans, plastic, glass, etc.) and the plastic bags we use for the small trash cans in the bathrooms and living spaces. The ones we don’t use are taken back to the store and we include other plastic bag type items. The store gets reimbursed for recycling what we can’t put in our own recycling bins. We have tried the reusable bags, but other than my Mom, we suck at it.
I have never owned or brought reusable grocery bags… a big thing in my local store is grocery pickup, how is that done with reusable bags?
@awk Does that mean you order your groceries online and then pick them up at the store? I don’t do that with all the fruits and vegetables that I buy. Prefer to pick all the food myself because I wouldn’t want a bunch of green bananas or squished ones either.
There was one time in my life where my anxiety was so bad that I considered a service to do this for me and then deliver them to my house. But I’m on medication now and grocery shopping at regular stores is one thing I can do. I’d only consider ordering online if my anxiety gets worse one day.
@cengland0 I was surprised at the good quality of the produce I got when I tried this with walmart. Even the bananas, which I’m super picky about, were what I’d have chosen myself. I asked for 3lbs of tomatoes and got a 4 pack in cellophane that weighed a little more for the 3lb price. Unblemished, perfect tomatoes. I was really happy with it. I am a loss leader shopper though, I plan my menus around the ads, and none of the stores here that do loss leaders have grocery pickup.
@awk My local grocery store uses paper bags for pickup. I don’t use the pickup service, though, because I like walking through the grocery store and being around other people.
They also deliver for a small fee.
@cengland0 I used to worry about produce, but I’ve ordered groceries at the supermarket, through Jet.com, and from a local produce box subscription and I very rarely got something I’d consider bad.
At the local store’s web page each item has a note attached to it so you can specify what you want (eg “one bunch yellow with no spots, one bunch green”).
At the moment I order almost everything from Jet except fresh produce, frozen stuff, liquids, heavy things, etc. I still want to wander around and “shop” which is hard to do online. But online is great when you’re buying from a list.
in germany, grocery bags aren’t “free”, so most people bring their own. works quite well this way
@pedrostee yeah, I’ve only gotten disposable plastic bags in the produce aisle around here. And non-grocery stores.
We bring them, then leave them in the car.
I have about 15 of them. Used to keep them all in my car and always have them with me. For a while now (since getting a new car) I keep forgetting them because I don’t have as much trunk space and have other stuff there for the grands sports thingies. I do prefer them tho… they hold more, easier to carry in the house and the grocers actually have to think about how their putting the stuff in there and distribute the weight more evenly.
Target gives me 5 cents back for every bag I bring that they use.
I used to always forget them until I started using a couple ChicoBags.
It was hard to remember to bring bags to the grocery store at first but it’s become a habit that I feel good about now. Next I need to learn to keep a bag with me for those quick stops at other stores. I was going to use a tshirt bag but I love those ChicoBags @SSteve !
I always use the plastic bags, and every 10th trip or so (because I never remember), I’ll stuff a couple of them, full of about a million others (as well as deflated packing air bags from Amazon) into one of the recycling bins at the front of the store.
I have reusable bags and use them nearly every time I go to the grocery. I hate having to dispose of/recycle them, and a good fabric bag has no problems carrying a lot of canned goods. Plus, the fact that many of mine are made from old jeans is a good conversation starter; the people working checkout are always happy to see that I have remembered my pants!
I have usually remembered to take enough bags back out to the car to do it.
I use the Trader Joe’s canvas bags, which are very strong and can hold a lot of stuff. I’ve priced buying similar bags, and it’s cheaper to get the Trader Joe’s ones, although I rarely go to Trader Joe’s (due to proximity more than anything else).
It’s more convenient for me to use them. They hold a lot and don’t rip. I toss them in with the laundry every now and then.
I do put meat and produce in plastic bags first, usually the little ones that are in the meat and produce sections.
And I bag my own groceries, because apparently grocery store employees who can efficiently bag is a thing of the past.
Spotted a new thing at the local coöp this weekend, a take-a-bag-leave-a-bag sort of thing for when you’ve forgotten to bring one. Grab one out of the bin with the implication being that you’ll bring it (or another) back next time. Good for dumping all the totes folks get as promotional items as well.
As far as the question, I can’t really fathom forgetting to bring a bag as it’s part of the conscious decision to go grocery shopping for me. I have, of course, wound up at a grocery store unplanned and therefore bagless.
The reusable ones have radio tags in them that scan/track your purchases. Nice try, big brother.
@medz In extremely limited places, none of them grocery stores. Even if it were widespread, just bring bags unrelated to that store, or buy bags on etsy or chico bags or whatever.
[3]:
@moondrake
/image woot.com totes goats tote
If I actually shopped for a family I’d buy these.
In fact I just bought some. I like that one of the bags us insulated.
@moondrake I like the idea of that, but I’d have to take everything out to scan it, then put it back in. For my needs I don’t see that as an advantage over just bagging at checkout.
It would be great if I could scan the food as I put it in the cart, though.
@craigthom I rarely use self checkout as it’s such a pain for produce. I figure I can leave a gap between the bags of items on the conveyor and hand the bags to the clerk in the desired order to have them reloaded in the order I want them sorted. I might use more than two twice a year, though.
@craigthom Sam’s has that. They call it scan and go, and you scan and pay with an app on your phone.
The other day at a local Walmart they had a bunch of scan and go terminals being installed where some registers were. I’m curious if that’s the same thing or just confusingly named.