My Mom does. Used to make me crazy. Now, if the bag isn’t soiled with heavy odors or oils or something obvious, I’ll scrub it out with soapy water and hang to dry and re-use.
Trying to reduce my plastics footprint a bit.
Folly or no?
I reuse them if they’ve only held dry stuff. I don’t wash them if it’s something wet or ooky.
My wife reuses them all the time. I don’t have the patience to wash them out, but she does it routinely. It’s one of her small save-the-planet gestures, along with reusing paper that’s only been printed on one side; back in the hopper with ye!
I do. I only use ZipLocks for freezing, I always re-use them when the content was dry, like sliced bread. For meat and fish, rather seldom. Fruit and veggies are OK, I mostly re-use those too.
I bought Ziploc-like bags, that are intended for reuse, and are heavier-duty, so they stand up to the dishwasher. Bought some when my son first started needing packed lunches, and that was 14 years ago. Most of them are still in service. A few broke along the seams, but only after several years, and on one the zipper broke. But the ones still in service work perfectly, and seal perfectly.
I still buy Ziploc bags, because occasionally I need something throwaway, something to give to someone else, or something I will store a non-food item in long-term, and don’t need a sturdy one like the “stand up to the dishwasher” ones.
When other people give me things in Ziplocs, and they are clean and dry, I reuse them. If they are dry, but not clean (they had ground coffee, for example, in them), and they are big enough, I take them with me when I walk my dog, to get one last use out of them.
The reusable ones I ordered from Amazon, and the specific ones I got are not there anymore, but there are several different ones that look the same, and cost about the same (more, but not much, for 14 years later).
I only re-use them for freezing, but only for meat. I portion out ground beef into 1-pound portions or ⅓-pound patties, and put them into fold-top plastic bags. The fold-top bags go into a 1-gallon zip-top bag for storage in the freezer. When I make meatloaf, I always prepare two; one for cooking, and one for freezing. I wrap the meatloaf well in plastic wrap, and then put it into a 1-gallon zip-top bag. The meat never touches the zip-top bag.
Otherwise, zip-top bags are one use. I try to use reusable containers when I can.
Only if there is no reason not to.
I use them to hold ice to help keep drinks cold, when out and about. No reason not to reuse these again and again.
I’d have no issue reusing them if used to store the same dry food - portioning huge Costco size snacks is cheaper than buying small sizes.
If you repeatedly wash out the bag with water or soap, at some point you invest work, time, resources for a result more likely to work less well. I try to reuse items that I once simply discarded. But am no zealot, and will do so if it means more work for less utility.
I don’t wash them, but I reuse them if I can without washing. So, the ziplock bag that held a chunk of cheese may hold several more chunks of cheese until one of them molds and infects the bag with spores. I’ve used the same ziplock bag to hold veggie scraps for soup in the freezer for more than a year, now. I realized that if I leave it in the freezer even when it’s empty, it doesn’t get gross. I reuse the ziplock bag for chicken carcasses, too. (although that one gets more physical wear and tear, since it’s sometimes hard to get the frozen pieces of chicken out. So I had to replace it a couple of months ago.)
I reuse them too especially to store something that’s open but still in its original packaging. If I store something wet like stew I won’t reuse it but it may get rinsed then filled with kitchen debris like grounds or egg shells before it’s tossed.
I’ll also sometimes rinse and reuse paper towels
I keep used ones in a bucket under the sink. I use larger storage and freezer bags to collect compost stuff until it’s ready to dump into the outdoor bin. It’s rare that I have them but I’ll use smaller ones like sandwich bags as disposable gloves when cleaning the cat litter.
Back when I was working, schedule factors meant I had to take my morning pills during work hours, so I took the day’s allotment to work in one of those mini ziplock bags. I reused those bags dozens and dozens of times, never washing them out. I figured if I ‘gained’ a few micrograms of whatever from the dust off yesterday’s pills, it would be offset by the few micrograms that would rub off todays.
We re-use them in our house if they’ve contained dry stuff. Since recycling is pretty much a bust/sham these days, we focus on reduce and re-use.
I do, too. If I pat dry a vegetable, or make a quick swipe around the sink, I drape the fairly clean paper towel over the faucet to dry and use it to spot-clean the inevitable drips and spots on the floor. … They do sell washable re-usable cellulose ‘Swedish towels’, I may give them a try. (except for yucky wet messes, like coughed up hairballs)
I used to wash and re-use ziploc type bags that I hadn’t yet torn or gotten too gross w contamination. Then I realized the water & detergent was more precious than the plastic. Now I almost always use them just once.
I substantially never put something clean or dry into a ziploc; if it’s food it’s always goopy somehow. And where I use ziplocs for organizing non-food items, the contents and the ziploc will be together for years until both are eventually used up or thrown away as obsolete.
I wouldn’t reuse a Ziplock bag that held food that could spoil. They’re too difficult to wash and the bags can’t be sterilized without destroying them.
I reuse them if they held cookies, bread or other dry foods. Wipe out the crumbs and they’re ready to use.
Like many here, I don’t wash them, but I do reuse them if they are able to be reused without the need for washing (e.g. they held dry stuff, or they held ice.)
My wife got me in the habit of washing and reusing them since she had learned to be thrifty. It used to annoy me endlessly that it was very hard to get a bag that had held anything greasy clean, until I learned the trick of rubbing dish detergent directly on the bag and then rinsing it. So now I reuse bags more or less until they wear out; once in a while I will say “aw, screw this” and toss the bag but not routinely.
I bought some silicone reusable ones a while back, but someone buried them in the bowels of the kitchen and I haven’t seen them since. They were great though. You could stretch them over the tines of the dishwasher and they came out spanking clean. But no, I don’t use (or reuse) anything that can’t go in the dishwasher.
I also don’t use very many of ziplocks. I mostly use old pho cups to store and reheat small items, and containers for big stuff. I use ziplocks for leftover cheese, and a few other things that benefit from airless wrapping. And I use the really big ones a lot when I travel to contain liquids.
I mean, you do you, but washing them out for reuse completely defeats the purpose of the ZipLock bag. They’re supposed to be convenient one use items. It’s like washing aluminium foil so you can use it again.
Edit: After reading the other responses, I feel like such an outlier. You all really reuse ZipLocks that often?
I do reuse if they don’t need washing. I don’t wash ziplocks.
If it needs washing it becomes a cat litter bag. Phila has a no plastic bag law so I don’t get free litter bags. Ziplocks work for the scoop and toss.