Wash Your Bags, Not the Food

May 12th, 2011

The scene inside my dryer a few days ago:

A freshly washed and dried bulb of garlic, scattered into cloves and lovely detached garlic skins.

It was a fluttery, though amusing mess. On the floor. On the towels. And in my dryer. Not the biggest mess I’ve ever made (that involved unformed Jell-O), but close.

Amazingly, the laundry didn’t smell like garlic!

What’s the lesson here?

Even when you think you’ve checked your reusable bags, check again.

A few weeks ago I washed a bottle of saline spray. Seems like I have a problem.

It’s good to wash your bags, and to select the type of bags that are machine washable. You don’t want bacteria on your food stuff. Yet, you don’t want to wash your garlic either.

From now on, I’m going to turn each bag inside out before washing. Lesson learned. Garlic wasted.

As silly as this was, at least I wasn’t embarrassed like not so long ago when the grocery store manager who was helping bag picked up the silky-like, colorful ChicoBags and loudly exclaimed, “Looks like you brought your underwear!”

Do you have a reusable bag story to share?

Filed under Green Choices | Comments (4)

4 Responses to “Wash Your Bags, Not the Food”

  1. Karen Fisher-Alaniz on May 28, 2011 12:18 am

    Believe it or not, I do. My significant other, who shall remain nameless likes to crumple them up like they’re plastic bags. Geesh! It drives me crazy. I keep them all folded nice so they’ll sit upright when they’re filled. He even bent one that had a solid (ish) bottom, to make it fit behind the seat. Oh my! But washing garlic, Wow! You ought to get a prize or something. I can’t believe your clothes didn’t smell like it for months!

  2. Peggy on May 31, 2011 2:49 am

    Hi Karen. Sorry it took so long for me to approve this comment. Not sure how I missed it!

    Yeah, I deserve a garlic-washing prize, don’t I?

    I don’t exactly fold my bags, but I don’t crumple them either! I tend to toss them all inside one of the bags. Not mashed, but not folded.

  3. Jennifer on June 6, 2011 2:21 am

    Ha ha ha! That sucks. We keep our bags in the closet near the front door and we have a ton, and we don’t wash them every single time (overkill). Once I went to get a bigger reusable bag from the closet, one we had not used in a while and it felt really heavy, which made me go hmmm. Then I opened it up and inside was a totally dead, mummified cucumber! All shriveled and ick. Needless to say, we didn’t eat it 🙂

  4. Peggy on June 7, 2011 12:19 am

    Yuck, mummified cucumber! 🙂

    I have around 8 bags and wash them about once a week, sometimes less. I throw them in with the cloth napkins load, so it’s not really an extra load or anything.

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