We’re all looking for useful ways to cut down on waste and reuse items that would otherwise go straight in the trash. And keeping a tidier kitchen is a constant on many of our to-do lists, even if it’s not explicitly written down. There are some easy tips for better kitchen organization, like keeping your cabinets nice and neat with a lazy Susan or using baking pans as drawers to organize your fridge. But, even if your kitchen is generally more of a triage center than a neat-as-a-pin modern laboratory facility, there’s one simple trick that will help keep you more organized — and make it easy to grab an always-useful plastic bag with one hand, even if the other is occupied with a baby, at the stove, or carrying a gym bag on your way out the door. Our tip: Save your old tissue boxes and use them as plastic bag dispensers.
While we may know the advantages of reusable shopping bags, plastic grocery or retailer bags are a simple reality for many of us and still quite useful after you’ve come home from the store. You can reuse plastic grocery bags time and time again, and you don’t have to merely stuff them into an ever-growing heap under the sink. You can organize them quite easily. You just need to know this simple folding technique.
How to make a grocery bag dispenser out of an old tissue box
Really any tissue or Kleenex box that dispenses tissues from the top of the container will work for this grocery bag dispenser hack. When you have your plastic bags gathered, you’ll stack them one on top of the other inside the tissue box. Just stretch your first bag out lengthwise and put it in the empty box horizontally, placing the bottom at one edge of the box and leaving the handle end of the bag sticking out of the other end of the box’s opening. You’ll run the bottom end of the next bag through the handles of the first, then criss-cross stack them, one after the other. Each subsequent bag’s bottom will be looped through the handles of the bag before it. So, as you pull one out, the handle of the next bag will be sticking up, ready to be pulled out.
Your DIY grocery bag tissue box dispenser will fit at least a dozen bags, depending on the size, so you’ll save room where the loosely balled-up bags used to be. And they won’t be smashed into a corner or stuffed into drawers, blocking the view of important kitchen utensils or cleaning products. Just put them in the drawer with your sandwich bags, napkins, or trash bags, or under the sink. You can even use double-sided tape to mount the dispenser upside-down under a kitchen shelf or sideways on the inside of a cabinet door. This simple organizational tip will save you time and space, and it’s all done with items you already have on hand.
