Tutorial: reusable food bags

I have slowly been collecting the transparent, plastic bags that sheets, toys and other things come packaged in. Never throw these away! There are SO many different ways to use them (an obvious one being to store other toys, art supplies, or clothes in.) I used a few of these bags for the windows in our table fort, and have been meaning to turn a few more into reusable food bags for quite some time. I was finally forced to when we started running low on sandwich bags, and I was determined to not buy anymore. Lately I have noticed how much waste goes out of our house, and how many things get used once only to be thrown away. So this is one (very small) attempt to "reduce" and "reuse" (which, in my opinion, is even more important than "recycle"... but more on that another time.)



I plan to use these bags for any dry foods (crackers, cookies, etc.) and continue using small plastic containers for the more messier foods that would be harder to rinse out (like apples or oranges). But we'll still keep a box of sandwich bags around... they're nice to have when sending people home with cookies or to use when traveling, but hopefully with these bags we can cut back a little bit.


What you'll need:

Plastic material (bags)
Sewing machine
Sew-on velcro

I started by making patterns for my bags on cardstock and wanted three different sizes.


Gather together your collection of old plastic bags.


Trace the patterns onto your plastic and cut out. I then washed them with soap and water and hung them to dry.

Sew velcro onto either end of the plastic piece. IMPORTANT: Make sure to sew them onto different sides (one on what you could call the "right" side and one on the "wrong" side so that when the bag is folded up the velcro will be in the right spot.)


Fold the bottom up and sew down the sides.


It's as easy as that! They sew up pretty fast. Don't you love turning old stuff into new stuff?! Maybe it's just me.