Custom bags to store firewood

As it gets colder and colder (even here in temperate Atlanta), our gas and electric bills can quickly soar out of control. Custom bags can help store firewood and encourage you to get a fire roaring in the fireplace... it's free heat!

In my house, when we have the heat on the upstairs is a good ten degrees warmer than the downstairs -- what a waste when we spend most of our time in the living room. Fortunately, we have a beautiful working fireplace downstairs that we plan on using as soon as we obtain some firewood. Firewood sells cheap at the grocery store or on Craigslist, and you can easily store it in custom bags to keep it from making a mess. Tuck the custom bags in a corner or store them in a closet.

Use custom bags to hold onto autumn

As fall starts to fade away, try making some of these newspaper leaves (from "Life With Little Ones") to hold onto the season in your home. Use custom bags to collect old newspapers, and take other custom bags outside to collect freshly fallen leaves of different shapes and sizes.

Place a sheet of newspaper over the leaf and use crayons to rub color onto the newspaper, leaving the texture of the leaf beneath. Then lift the newspaper sheet and cut it out to make a delicate, transparent autumn leaf that you can hang as garland or tape to a window. Then store the supplies in custom bags so you can make more next fall.

Idea and image from villicanamomma.blogspot.com.

Host a crafting party and BYO custom bags

Friday I'm having a crafting party at my house, where attendees are encouraged to bring their own drinks and supplies in custom bags. For my craft, I'll either be hanging hooks for bags (like I blogged about below), making DIY holiday decorations, binding a book as a Christmas present, or decorating a travel mug for a friend. I just realized I have a lot of crafting to do.

I've said it before but I'll say it again: crafting is communal. So custom bags are essential to having an easy way to transport your supplies from house to house. My friend Jamison is knitting Christmas gifts for family this year, and for the past month he's been toting a custom bag with yarn and needles.

Job hunting? Take custom bags.

If you are one of the many, many Americans currently looking for a job, custom bags could come in handy when making your interview rounds. I wouldn't suggest actually bringing custom bags with you on an interview -- you'll need something a bit more professional than that -- but they can be helpful carriers that stay in your car or home. Use custom bags to...

1. carry applications, if you're going around to restaurants and retailers looking for openings.
2. carry a water bottle, snack, sweater/jacket and change of shoes if you are headed to an interview. When I was interviewing for jobs in the summer and fall I would often emerge from them with my stomach growling and my feet hurting.
3. carry a notebook with copies of your resume. You never know when a casual conversation could turn into a networking opportunity.

How to store custom bags

By this point I've collected quite a few custom bags. (I have a habit of forgetting to bring my custom bags to Trader Joe's and purchasing more at the store.) When I was browsing for solutions to storing all these bags I came across a similar question on Apartment Therapy. One commenter recommends purchasing nice hooks -- you can get some really pretty ones at Anthropologie -- and interspersing them on a blank wall. Then use the hooks to display your purses and custom bags. That way you can find them easily when you need them, and you don't have to keep shoving them under the sink.

Use custom bags to help with holiday decorating

I’ve been itching to craft lately, and after I saw the “Holiday Decoration Ideas” entry on apartmenttherapy.com I texted my roommate, “Want to plan a day of holiday crafting next weekend?”

Take custom bags to the craft stores to stock up on supplies, then when you get home sort them in custom bags: one for tinsel, one for ball ornaments, one for lights, one for garland, etc. Apartment Therapy suggests filling clear ornament balls with colorful tinsel and attaching a gift tag at the top… great for name placards at dinner. What other D.I.Y. holiday decorations can custom bags help organize?

Use custom bags to sort old clothing

Yesterday I talked about a used clothing store that offered incentives to its customers to bring their own custom bags. I started thinking about buying and selling used clothing, and remembered how useful custom bags were for recycling your wardrobe.

If you’re like me, you tend to accumulate far too many clothes. This summer when I moved to Georgia from North Carolina I was faced with this problem. I only had a small U-haul, which was definitely not big enough to carry the number of boxes it would have taken to haul all the clothes I never wore anyway. So I used custom bags to organize what I wanted to sell, what I wanted to give away, and what I wanted to keep. I was able to efficiently cut down on my wardrobe by two thirds, and didn’t have to throw anything away.

Recycle your wardrobe with custom bags

A clothing store in my neighborhood called Rag-O-Rama encourages customers to save plastic and Rag-O-Rama's money by supplying their own custom bags. Every time you make a purchase and turn down a Rag-O-Rama bag, the clerk gives you a token which you can then drop into the box representing a charity of your choice. The store will then donate the cost of the bag to that charity. The strategy is brilliant, because whatever brand exposure they are losing by not having their custom bags out on the town they are gaining in word-of-mouth. How refreshing to see a company that puts sustainability in practice rather that giving mere lip service to the trend. Next time I shop at Rag-O-Rama, I'm bringing my own custom bags.