I bought it at the Container Store in 2012 when I moved from the country into town. It was $99 and that seemed an absurd amount to spend for a garbage can. But I love it, and I love it every time I see it in my kitchen. However, like all products that I love/loved, they don’t make it anymore.
The garbage can I use in my kitchen is quite small (not sure of the actual capacity, but on the order of around 10 liters). The perfect bags for it have always been plastic grocery bags – the ones that have now been declared evil and illegal! I subsisted for years on my vast stash of them after they were discontinued, but now my supply is running low. The basement stash is all cleaned out, and though there may be a few hundred more in the garage, I actually paid for plastic garbage bags the other day for the first time ever.
They’re the “small” size of a discount no-name store brand, and I don’t like them as much as the grocery bags. They’re a fairly good match for the can size but a really snug fit around the lip. You have to carefully center them and pull tightly to get them to snap over the edges, being careful not to tear them. PITA. I’ll have to try a different size or brand next time. Man, I miss the old plastic grocery bags! And they were free!
Completely gone. There used to be municipal and provincial regulations, but now it’s federal. The smaller traditional transparent produce bags are still allowed, though, and those are useful as well, not for garbage but for wrapping things that are going to be refrigerated.
Yep. My grocery store started giving 5 cent rebates if you brought your own bag. I did it for a while, but then I ran out of my collection of bags and stopped.
The useless things that tear easily, have these huge holes called handles at the top that ensure spillage out the sides, and every one also has a hole in the bottom so anything wet fouls the can and the floor all the way to outside?
It depends. There are really flimsy, thin, see-through bags that are just like how you describe. And there are also thicker, more sturdy ones that aren’t see-through that are really solid and reliable. Some stores offer the latter kind of bag around here, and I have a pretty big stash of them at this point. They aren’t free but they’re only a few cents each charged at checkout.
I think what you’re describing are the plastic bags meant for reuse. The really flimsy kind really are not, though they can be reused. And the flimsy kind are the ones that often end up polluting the environment, stuck on trees or fences.
Your grocery bags apparently were not like my grocery bags. They were generally pretty sturdy, and the ones from Pusateri’s were practically indestructible!
I don’t know… The kind that are meant to be reused seem more cloth-like (even the plastic ones). These are just thick plastic. Very stretchy, almost rubbery. They’re pretty good for a single use, and maybe a few uses, but I think if you tried to use them over and over again they’d wear out pretty quickly.
I found an example of one, this picture looks just like what I’m talking about:
See how it’s not see-through at all, and it’s almost like vinyl. But if you pull on it, it will stretch and tear. It just takes more force than the really flimsy ones, like this one:
See how that one you can see through easily?
Though you might be right. Maybe they’re meant to be reusable. I found a picture showing 3 different kinds of plastic shopping bags:
The bag on the left is the old, flimsy, crappy kind that I believe LSL Guy was talking about. The middle bag is what I was talking about, and I see that it says “reusable” on it in this picture, so I guess you are correct. Though I wouldn’t count on using it too many times. The bag on the right in that picture is what I think of as a true reusable bag.
I don’t collect the really flimsy bag type, but that thicker bag I absolutely will collect. I have a bin in my kitchen closet that has a ton of them.
The bag on the left is the type that’s always worked well in my garbage bin. Ironically, when the grocery chain Loblaws decided to start charging 5¢ per bag, they switched to an inferior brand that was in fact pretty crappy and liable to have holes in it, but the ordinary free bags were really pretty good.
And as for the good quality bags on the right, the ones from Pusateri’s are actually insulated and foil-lined, which I appreciate since this fine store is now a fair distance away in summer heat!
All my various grocery stores and Home Dept and Lowes and Ace Hardware and CVS and Walgreens experience is with the thinnest flimsiest sort cited by the diligent folks just above. If they don’t have a hole in the bottom when I begin loading them at the store, they will by the time they’re home.
They’re decent enough for wrapping shoes in a suitcase, packing a picnic lunch for one person, or gathering a half a dozen small items to carry down to the car. But messy garbage? No way I’m dealing with the statistically inevitable catastrophic failures.
I certainly have seen the stouter kind but only at places like a clothing or housewares store. Wherefrom I might collect a half-dozen such bags in a year.
You can, of course, just buy good quality reusable grocery bags and bring them into stores rather than using the flimsy t-shirt bags provided by the stores.
I have many cloth, plastic, and insulated shopping bags. I virtually never remember to take them to the store with me. It irritates me that I cannot do this simple thing.
I have many many plastic t-shirt bags that I put in my bathroom and bedroom trash cans. They are apx. 4 gallons, fit a small trashcan perfectly,and the handles tie it closed. I also use some of the packing plastic bags from Hubsters medical supplies. I can often reuse the ones in the bedroom for months.
I don’t think these are the BEST necessarily, but I’ve been really pleased with the Amazon Clean Fresh Scent Drawstring Bags. They’re about $24 for 200 bags. There’s nothing fancy about them (usual 0.9 mil), but they have never leaked or torn for me. The strings are quite strong and do what they’re supposed to without pulling out or breaking. They do have a scent, but it’s so mild that it shouldn’t bother anyone. (You can also get them unscented.) At 12 cents a bag, they are totally worth it.
