Welcome to “the movement”. I’ve been using cloth bags from Safeway for 3 or 4 years now. It’s really good to see others jump on the train. For those wondering, I still get plastic bags, I just get a lot less.

It would be great to “go bagless” and not need plastic bags at all, but the infrastructure just isn’t there yet.

And I’m not really a “green freak”. I’m actually a walker (28, never owned a car). As a walker the cloth bags are tremendously useful. They’re square and strong and large, so they hang at your sides comfortably. With plastic bags, I’d always end up with layers of bags puffing out at the sides. But the square bags tend to pack much nicer.

My only caveat is that not every bagger really knows how to bag with cloth. If your supermarket has brown paper bags, they may have some experience. But I’ve often had to give a pointer or two (”it’s square”, “don’t be afraid to load it up”) and sometimes I’ve just re-packed the bags all together.

Plus the bonus on having these bags around is that they suddenly just become “randomly” useful. In fact, I really like the idea of keeping them in your trunk.

Stop and Shop gives a 5 cent discount for each bag shoppers bring. It isn’t much but every little bit helps!

Not to mention Mother Earth breathes a sigh of relief.

Imani

My tip. Only use the normal sized bags and leave the oversized bags at home. We have a couple of larger ones we got as give aways and we don’t take those anymore. For some reason the sackers at the two stores we frequent will inevitably place all of the largest and heaviest items in the larger bags. Why they think my wife wants to or is even capable of carrying a bag with 2 gallons of milk, 2 2-liters of soda, and 2 2-half gallons of orange juice into the house is beyond me.

I used Swheat Scoop for awhile, but at that time we had to keep the litter box in our bathroom, and the moisture from the shower made it smell. Yuck. In our new house we finally have a useable basement where the litter box is, so I’ve been thinking about switching back. It’s much easier to keep the litter box clean with the flushable.