Plastic Bags

I grew up without them. I can’t remember when they began to appear, but my first recollection of them is when bread wrappers changed from waxed paper to plastic. My mother saved and reused them. She washed them along with the dishes and hung them by clothespins to dry on a metal kitchen towel rack. She also acquired plastic bowl covers that were circular and elasticized.

If still alive my mother would be 101. I wonder what she would think of we way we freely use and discard plastic. All packaging today is made of plastic, sometimes in combination with paper. It seems so unnecessary and wasteful of resources. Many things that don’t need to be packaged come in plastic packaging anyway.

My mother lives on in me in many ways, one of which is an appreciative respect for plastic. My children, I believe, think I’m a bit dotty about saving plastic bags to use over and over again. I can’t help it. There’s good justification in my case because I produce so much food from scratch and because we harvest vegetables from our garden. The bags are excellent storage solutions.

So, when you walk into my house, one of the first things you see is a plastic bag hanging by a magnet from the refrigerator door. In this case, the bag is accompanied by a rubber glove that fell in the dishwater and got wet inside. If I had a towel rack like Mother’s I would use that.

I also have a couple of plastic bowl covers, but they are hard to find now. Instead, I use the plastic caps made for beauty shop use. I bought a package of them at the beauty supply store. I use them over and over until the elastic goes limp from exhaustion.

Of course I can’t save and reuse all the plastic that comes into our house. We recycle almost all of it, but I’m always on the lookout for a sturdy plastic bag that doesn’t have printing on it.

Thanks, Mom. I know you would also want me to say that when the petroleum runs out, plastic bags will be only a memory.

Copyright 2012 by Shirley Domer