Tissue Box-Style Plastic Bag Holder

Like pretty much everybody, my family has a huge stash of plastic grocery bags used for scooping cat/dog poop, carrying things, you name it. We used to cram our bags into a cabinet in the kitchen, but my OCD and I really didn't like how disorganized that was, so I decided to make a neater, more compact one. It looks and works like a tissue box, the only difference is that it's bigger, and, well, it doesn't contain tissues. 
Pretty nifty, eh? :D

Step 1: Ingredients

You don't need much, just
Plastic Bags
I probably used about 75 bags. How many you use depends on how many you have and how deep your box is. Also, make sure your bags are all approximately the same size and shape.

A Cardboard Box with a Lid
Your box should be about 12" wide, 36" long, and 5" deep, but the depth can vary. Plastic bags are remarkably squishy creatures, and they can fit into pretty much any box depth. My box was a bit wider than I wanted, so I padded the edges with crumpled-up tissue paper. My measurements are for normal sized plastic grocery bags, you can adjust for larger or smaller bags.

Scissors/X-acto Knife.    
For cutting a hole in the box's lid through which the bags can come out.

Step 2: Bags

Flatten out your bags. You could also do this as you go.  

Step 3: Folding

This is the main and hardest part of the project. If you've ever looked at the way tissues are placed inside their box, you'll see that they aren't just stacked in there, they're folded so that they overlap. That way, when you pull the kleenex out of the box, it pulls the tissue behind it out, and so on. We're trying to do the same thing here.

1. Lay a bag out flat on your work surface with the handles facing you. 

2. Lay the second bag over the first, so that it overlaps by 50% (aka half of bag 2 is on bag 1). The handles on bag 2 should be facing away from you.

3. See that area where the 2 bags overlap? Fold bag 1 there

4. Line the left corner of bag 3 up with the left corner of the overlap area, handles facing you

5. Fold bag 2 onto the overlap area.

6. Repeat that until you've used up all your bags

If the written instructions didn't work for you, I have a video, too.




[ [ Video(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1FxI_L-uiQ)  ] ]

Step 4: Make a Hole

Congratulations, you just finished the trickiest part. All that's left to do now is to cut a slit in the lid of the box for the bags to come through. Using your scissors or x-acto knife, cut the hole in the middle of the box. Mine was a little less than a foot long and about 3 inches wide.

Step 5: Finishing Touches

To finish, youst put everything in the box, as per the video:

[ [Video(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4A3rGuN5-o)  ] ]

Yay! You're done! If you want, you can decorate the box. I didn't, because it already had a pretty pattern.

That was my first instructable, how'd I do?