Last year while at Costco, they were selling these canvas grocery totes. A portion of the purchase price was donated to a charity. (I can’t remember the charity). I knew about the concept of using your own grocery bags at stores but had never really thought about doing it myself. I hate the plastic grocery bags and always use the paper ones whenever possible. At least those are recycled easier. These Costco ones sounded like a good idea so we bought two of them. I didn’t like them though. They were hard to pack groceries in as they weren’t really designed well. They ended up staying in the back of the kidmobile pretty much forgotten . That is until we went camping at the beginning of the summer. We used them to bring home dirty laundry, lol. Then they disappeared. I have no idea where we put them. So they were pretty much forgotten.

Last Sunday we took the kids to the new(ish - at least to us) Vancouver Farmer’s Market. We had not been there since it moved to a new bigger location so it had been years. We were impressed. While purchasing this wooden dog feeder we fell in love with, we noticed they were selling grocery totes. These were well designed. They stand up on their own so they are easy to fill up, and the fold down totally flat. We bought four. I have used them twice already this week and am in love! I want more! So I’ve been looking for some online…. and not really finding the same thing. I’ve looked a bit every day. Obsessing about them. I want to use them every time I go shopping! Now of course I wonder where those Costco bags are. I could likely find a good use for them somehow when grocery shopping. I’ve been looking for them all week and asked Jack to look for them in the camping stuff. We can’t figure out what the heck we did with them. And it bugs me! I know I’ll be heading back down to the Farmer’s market to pick up a few more, at least. But where are those darn Costco ones?

As if obsessing on grocery totes wasn’t enough, yesterday as I was vacuuming, our little Hoover canister vacuum we bought right before we bought this house indicated the bag was full. We didn’t have any extra bags. This isn’t a huge deal because the previous owners of this house left us an old Kenmore upright vacuum that works great. We leave that upstairs so we don’t have to haul vacuums up and down the stairs. So I brought it down to finish the job and guess what? Yep, it was full too! No bags for that either. I stopped by the store yesterday and they didn’t carry EITHER vacuum bags. *sigh* I stupidly bought some I thought would fit anyway. Haha. No go.

So rather than run around all over town finding stores that carry both types of bags, or finding one type at one store and another at another store, I checked it out on eBay. Turns out one seller specializes in vacuum stuff and he had both types at a very reasonable price. Even after shipping, I’m playing less per bag than if I bought them in the store. And I save gas too. I bought about a year’s worth of bags, lol. (We go through them fast with our two hairy doggies.)

Before anyone suggests a bag less vacuum, no. And I say that very loudly. NO! We’ve had two different kinds. I hated them both. Maybe we are just bag less vacuum dummies, but I don’t see how they are cleaner or easier in the slightest. When you empty the canister, dust flies all over the place, and cleaning out the filter is even worse! So it must be done outside or you’re just putting the dust and allergens right back into your house. We had to take the filters outside and shake them out into the garbage and the dust still sprays everywhere. Jack made the comment yesterday that he always hoped there was some wind so when he was shaking it out he could face it downwind. We tried two different kinds of vacuums because we thought maybe the first one we tried just sucked, but it seems they are all that way. With a bag vacuum, you just pull off the bag and toss it. And the filters are smaller and way easier to clean. No mess. To me that is much easier. At least until the bags are full and you run out.

So yeah… It just felt like one way or another I was obsessing on bags all week.