Facing My Fears And Scaring Cashiers

Now that I am committed to accepting as little plastic as possible in my life, I have stepped up my efforts to make sure I don't bring home any plastic bags. I have tried to be conscientious about this for the past few years, but trying to be conscientious still allows plastic bags to heap up in my house. Half the time the cashier would give me a plastic bag so fast that I wouldn't even have time to pull out my reusable bag. Then I would feel bad telling the cashier to re-bag my purchase. Voila, another plastic bag comes home with me.

Now, I have learned that if I don't want a bag (and I never do), I need to shout "I DON'T NEED A BAG" at the cashier as fast as I can. Generally, they jump back and snatch my purchase out of the bag like it's on fire.

So, here we come to the part that has been gnawing at me for days. How will I line my garbage cans without plastic bags? Can I use paper garbage bags in the kitchen? My biggest dread has been that goopy stuff will leak out of the paper garbage bag onto the plastic trash can.

This week I faced down my fear. When I took the paper bag out of the kitchen trash, there it was - wet, icky, garbage juice inside the can. My heart raced. I called my mother and asked her how the heck people dealt with their garbage prior to plastic grocery bags. It turns out that if the garbage leaked, they wiped out the can. Amazing. So I did what my mother did, and my grandmother before her. I got a wet rag, and I wiped out the can. It took two minutes and I survived.

Now that I have crossed this first hurdle, I wonder why on earth I thought I needed to protect my plastic garbage can from the garbage.

Of course, I do need to use one plastic bag to put my garbage out at the curb each week. That's the only way that the collectors will pick it up, but at least my bag is no longer filled with plastic bags.