Saving Money Little by Little: #6 - Reusing Zip Top Bags

Now be honest, I know most of you saw the title of that post, rolled your eyes and have now labeled us as "that" family - the one that reuses their zip top bags.

It's okay. I'm not offended.

The hubs and I do wash out and reuse zip top bags for as long as we possibly can. Zip top bags are convenient but they can also be expensive so when I use one bag simply to hold a piece of bread I packed for Abilene's dinner, I just can't justify throwing it away.

Some people think it's tedious but, really, I don't add more than 60 seconds (literally) to my dish washing routine.

I'm washing the dishes anyway so I just take my sponge and wash the zip top bag out with the rest of the dishes at the end of the night.

I then "hang it up to dry" on one of the utensils by the stove.

And the bags are dry and ready to be used by the morning.

I can't tell you how many times I'm able to reuse a bag (it depends on what I put in it) but it's a lot. Eventually, I will find a small hole and have to retire the bag from it's duties but that's after many, many uses.

There are certain times I won't reuse a bag, for example, if it held raw meat or something very oily. Those I toss right away. But I may have already been able to use said bag 4 or 5 times with non-salmonella food before I ended up marinating raw chicken in it.

It sounds silly but, over time, I've saved a lot of money by reusing our zip top bags. If I didn't reuse them, I could probably by a new box of snack-sized bags and sandwich-sized bags once every month - and that's just with one kid so far! But, by reusing the bags, each box will literally last me months and months. In fact, I probably haven't bought a new box of gallon-sized zip top bags in at least a year.

So don't be scurred to do a little zip-top-bag-washing. I promise it doesn't hurt that bad or take that long.

And yeah, people may look at you too and think you're "that" family but, hey, it's okay to be "that" family when yours is the one that's out of debt.

Find other little ways we save money by clicking here!