Plastic Bag Origami

Ok, I know all of you truly care about the environment and never use plastic bags, ever. Ever. You ALWAYS shop at the grocery store w/ your reusable tote bag. ALWAYS, right?
I'm going to admit that there is always going to be that one or two, or three times, where you end up taking something home in a plastic grocery bag, and sooner or later, that uncontrollable mass of plastic bag starts to consume space in your house. You might even have a plastic bag holder, but isn't it FULL by now? Here is a much smaller, tinier method of storage, that my mom will never post into an Instructable, (it's her idea) so I feel it's my responsibility.

Step 1 Flatten your plastic grocery bag

Make it nice and flat and smooth the air out, straighten all of the pleated parts on the side.

Comments

[sergohss]

omg i also do it, i learned it from a friend, but till now i haven't seen other ppl doing it :-)

[NoFiller]

Love it! All of those neatly folded bags used to be crammed into the large bag they are now sitting on. Kept my hands busy while watching TED.

[dechastangel]

my granma' always does this...

[residentevil5]

This is good. Since I need to find a way to save space in my room

[AznPanda]

lol same but my mom does it difrently and even smaller o.O

[jensohnpark]

that's actually really hilarious that you put this on because my mom does this to plastic bags all the time. I came home to my apt one day and my mom was sitting in my kitchen with a pile of plastic triangles :)

[conchens]

That's funny! Maybe both of our moms are wired with a special genetic code that pre-programs them to fold plastic bags into triangles. There must be a whole secret army of moms who do this, hehe.

[GorillazMiko]

smart, but i dont think small triangles are origami though.. haha

[DragonsCat]

Why not? Technically the only thing that makes this not STRICTLY origami is the fact that it's not paper :D

[rickharris]

Mmm, overall I bet that you can fill a container with more unfolded bags than you can with them folded!.

[ryzellon]

Nope, you lose. Composite (first) photo: jar with bags crammed in (after the air had been squeezed out). Secondary image is the same jar uncapped for 3 minutes, when a lot of the bags had decompressed and popped out. Second photo: jar with folded bags placed (not even crammed!) after 3 minutes to decompress. I'm in a hurry, so the folding is really sloppy and not as compact as it could be. If I took the time to properly fold the bags, they would take up even less space. In conclusion: ramming bags into a container might take less time, but a little extra effort to fold your bags may still be worthwhile. (e.g. when putting some bags in a glove compartment) This also applies to packing luggage: folded clothes will take up less room than crumpled & stuffed clothes (and require less ironing later).

[rickharris]

OK :-) Thanks for taking the effort to prove it.

[trooperrick]

hey, thats the same way I fold paper footballs. And isn't that also the way you fold the American flag?