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This Brilliant Way to Store Trash Bags Took Me By Surprise (Now It’s the Only Way I Do It)

Shifrah Combiths
Shifrah Combiths
With five children, Shifrah is learning a thing or two about how to keep a fairly organized and pretty clean house with a grateful heart in a way that leaves plenty of time for the people who matter most. Shifrah grew up in San Francisco, but has come to appreciate smaller town life in Tallahassee, Florida, which she now calls home. She's been writing professionally for twenty years and she loves lifestyle photography, memory keeping, gardening, reading, and going to the beach with her husband and children.
published May 6, 2024
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Someone holding box of trash bags
Credit: Sarah Crowley

File trash bags under the category of “Not hard to store, but certainly annoying.” It’s a nice idea to think that the box they come in will serve as a dispenser, but this never actually works out for me. If I manage to actually tear along the perforated edge, the box doesn’t usually last through the life of the roll. More often, however, I tear the box by accident and end up trying to fold in torn edges. And pulling bags out of the box is never as straightforward as it should be; I end up yanking the box along with the bag. 

I’ve given up on the box and usually just put our roll in the no-man’s land under the kitchen sink. It works okay, but it’s still awkward to pull a single bag off the roll. When dealing with garbage, I prefer not to also have to wrestle with the bags! (Another popular idea is hanging your roll of garbage bags, like you would hang paper towels, but it’s not an option for my under-sink setup.)

I know: This isn’t the biggest problem I’ll have today. But it’s annoying and I’d like a simple solution, so that I can worry about the actual problems that life throws my way.

Credit: Sarah Crowley

This is where Ida Levy’s brilliant garbage bag storage idea comes in. It is so wonderful: It’s easy to put into practice and eliminates all the garbage bag storage sore spots. All you need is a large plastic storage bin with a handle hole. Take the entire garbage bag roll out of the box and place it in the bin. Then, get it started by pulling the bags from the CENTER of the roll through the hole. Like disinfecting wipes, only with trash bags! The bin can then be placed on any shelf and, I haven’t tried this part yet, but I bet it would even work well if the bin were stood up vertically in an under-sink cabinet and placed against the side of a cabinet. Or even in a deep drawer.

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This brilliant garbage bag storage hack is like turning a roll of garbage bags into a box of tissues in terms of how easy it becomes to pull out the bags. It’ll be the best part of taking the garbage out. And now we can all worry about other things!

This article originally published on The Kitchn. See it there: The Most Brilliant Trash Bag Storage Solution We’ve Ever Seen