Plastic Grocery Bag Origami
Here is where we keep our plastic grocery bags. We’ve got loads of it! This little cabinet used to be filled with plastic bags that we can no longer see the back. We even forgot that we kept phone directories here! It was just packed!
It was transformed to this when relatives came to visit us last month.
Tito (Uncle) Kit, hubby’s uncle priest, taught us a method of neatly folding the grocery bags, something he learned from the seminary. And this cabinet looking like this now is his handy work. He folded most of the plastic bags all by himself with very little help from hubby and me. Hee hee. 
Do we follow this method now? As much as we can. Or, we simply keep the bags somewhere else. Hahaha!
Here’s the step by step guide to plastic bag folding:
1. Lay the plastic bag likeso on a flat surface with the print on top.
2. Fold it in half.
3. Fold it in half again.
4. Pull up the lower left corner of the bag and fold it in an angle likeso…making a triangle.
5. Work your way up keeping the traingle pattern that you’ve already got going until you reach the bag handles.
6. Tuck the bag handles in the pocket on one side of the triangle.
7. Tadaaa!
There. You can do this while watching tv. Or ask your kids to do it when you ground them or for time-out! 
Happy folding!
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Great post! I’m going to try and neatly fold my plastic bag collection. Right now mine are stuffed in a bin under the kitchen sink, not too pretty.
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Cute idea! I have a cabinet that is filled to the brim with plastic bags!
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Great idea to save space. I read about one (in Real Simple, I think) that my fiance and I use that is even easier.
When we use a box of tissues, we hold on to the empty box and simply shove the bags in there. It stores a lot of bags in a very small space and is even easier to do! I suppose you could even decorate the box if you wanted
.
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Best thing ever!!
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wow, this is a fantastic idea! Thanks
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Very nice, but it doesn’t work brilliantly on the heavier-quality bags we get here in Bosnia, and needs adapting if one is folding bags with rigid handles. Still, with a bit of ingenuity I managed to reduce half a cupboard-full to one small brown paper bag’s worth. Thanks.
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[...] Plastic Bag Origami by Cafe Munchkin – How to fold plastic bags so you can store them without taking over half of your pantry. [...]
Good idea… alternatively, of course, you can buy some re-usable cloth grocery bags and save some of that plastic waste (because honestly, if we really re-used those plastic bags as much as we planned to, we wouldn’t have a cabinet full of them to begin with)
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Don’t you folks have anything better to do than sit around folding plastic bags?
If you have so many extra bags why not just return them to the grocery store for recycling? All of the chains have recycling bins at their entrances, and they accept bags from any store as well as dry cleaning bags and plastic sleeves that newspapers come in.
Or take Kelly’s good advice and get some reusable cloth bags. They are inexpensive and versatile. Have a great day!
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munchkinmommy Reply:
August 25th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Hi Kathy! Thank you for your comment. May I just say that I don’t sit around all day folding plastic bags. Oh and there are loads of better things that I do, thank you for asking.
What we read from people’s blogs are but a glimpse of who and what they are that it’s next to impossible to judge them simply by what they’ve written.
We use the plastic bags as liners for our smaller trash bins. We also put meal-time trash and other food wastes, includiing left-over food, in these plastic bags to contain the smell. We don’t just dump food waste straight in the bigger trash bin because the smell often becomes offensive.
I know that stores collect plastic bags for recycling as I have brought a lot of my plastic bags to my favorite grocery store already. Thank you for sharing the information just the same. My daughter’s school also collects plastic bags for the children’s use. It’s where they put clothes that have been soiled because of potty accidents.
Again, thank you for making your opinion known. I feel you could have said it a little more nicely without offending people who appreciated the entry and thought it was informative. But hey, we all have our ways of sharing our thoughts. Have a great day, too!
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Does this really save any space? I keep my plastic grocery bags contained in a big bag too, but I don’t fold them, I just squish them all in, and I can easily fit so many that way that I can’t imagine I’d ever want to keep more on hand than that
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Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend anyone with my post. I guess I should have used a little smiley face after that first sentence, because I meant it to be humorous, not insulting. Personally, I do use plastic bags for many things, like trash can liners, cat litter box liners, and my sons like me to pack their lunches in them because they have a hard time remembering to collect their lunch boxes from the playground … the list goes on. I think they are more versatile than paper. Honestly, I hardly have any leftover bags to store. But I might try the folding method on those I do have; it looks easy and fun.
Best wishes,
Kathy
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My Mom taught me this already, and it’s very handy indeed. Good job with the illustrations!
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[...] plastic grocery bags taking over your kitchen? Why not fold them origami-style so that they take up less [...]
What a neat idea…I love the way it transformed the space you had…
I have loads of plastic bags & usually stuff them in a huge bag…but it’s not neat at all
I will be trying this
Thanks for sharing
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Why don’t you just try using cloth bags instead !!!!
Save a whole heck of a lot of time “folding” plastic bags, use the
storage area for storing your cloth bags instead.
To help change your minds to using cloth bags, find out how
many people lose their lives so that we may have the oil to produce
these bags in the first place; the bags that ar convenient to carry
our wares, but cause so much frustration in the storage of them, that
we need to learn origami …
Just another thought process for you !
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Cool post, thanks. My mom taught me that after she learned it from a
friend from South Africa. I will link to it from my blog.
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I let my boyfriend help fold some of them while he was watching TV
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BRILLIANT!
Made me smile reading this, thank you!
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H-E-B!!! Are you from Texas?
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munchkinmommy Reply:
November 6th, 2008 at 6:54 am
Hi Jonathan! As a matter of fact, I am.
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That is so neat, it would make them easy to carry in your purse so
that you can reuse them on your next trip.
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[...] Plastic Grocery Bag Origami (17,605 Views) [...]
really, will try this since we have lots of plastic bag in the kitchen, Niko said it was therapeutic
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wow, this is one great way of saving space and minimizing clutter. my plastic bags are just dumped in one big bag and they look so awful. your technique is really easy to follow and do. i’ll do this on the weekend! buhbye clutter! hello origami plastic bags! thanks for sharing this.
Ria
It’s My Party
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this is a great idea! will try this at home.
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You can re-use them? We just throw them outside and let them be urban tumbleweed.
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Thanks so much for sharing this. Now I won’t be fighting bags to get to the stuff under my sink.
As for the naysayers… If we’re still using plastic bags, hearing one. more. time. how we shouldn’t, isn’t going to change us. I actually do reuse mine as often as I say – I have a cabinet full because I will request them one or two grocery trips in a row when I’m running low. Then I’ll use my cute cloth bags until I’m running low again and need more for the various uses.
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Great!
Now the plastic bags need less then a third of the space.
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Hey! Nice job here! I’ll be dropping by from time to time
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This is an awesome post. I hope you don’t mind if I link to it on my blog. Thanks Laura Williams’ Musings for linking to this, I’m glad I saw it. I really don’t understand why people still don’t understand the meaning of “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all”… my toddlers understand this already.
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We have the same problem with supermarket plastic bags here in England and there are strenuous attempts to persuade people to use their own more substantial bags. instead Unfortunately plastic bags take centuries to decompose. I remember thirty years ago we took a holiday on the Algarve in Portugal and the whole place was littered with yellow plastic bags from the local supermarket. Some of our supermarkets are now charging for plastic bags nd may people provide their own bags. But still they accumulate.
My wife Marggaret has for many years folded up plastic bags in a similar manner to that shown and has kept one or two in her handbag where they don’t take up much room. Friends have been astonished when there has been an unexpected neeed for a bag and Margaret has been able to produce one, as, it were from nowhere!
David Lister
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Large plastic footballs! This is what we used to make out of notebook paper to flick at each other. Neat idea.
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