For a person who only shops once a month, finding enough plastic grocery bags to take care of this very necessary chore has always been something of an irritation. At the most I pick up ten bags a month through grocery shopping, and those were quickly used cleaning out the litter box once or twice a day. Also, I see that the writing is on the wall for plastic grocery bags. It probably won’t be long before they, like Chevy Suburbans, are a casualty of the “green” revolution.
Somehow I managed, though. And then I came across a great idea from thriftyfun.com, and all my litter disposal problems were over forever. They pointed me in the direction of an origami website that, among other things, offers instructions on how to make a small ‘garbage bin’ out of newspaper. The site is: www.origami-club.com/en. They have lots of great projects; this one is under “NEWSPAPER” (bottom left).
It took me a while to figure out how to do this, even with the great animated instructions. But once I figured it out, I had it down! Newspapers are a great source of free materials for me- I get a free local newspaper delivered right to my door every Thursday morning. After I read the local news, it used to go straight to my recycling bin but now it has a chance to be even more useful! At first, I would make a few ‘garbage bins’ at a time, so that I would always have a supply on hand. Here is one I made just now especially for this post. It took me less than a minute to do:
Nice, neat, and environmentally friendly.
Of course, the story doesn’t end there. This is fun to do, and very cute, but as you all know, I am terribly lazy. So of course, I’m always searching for ways to reduce my daily chores to the easiest way possible. Therefore, now I simply line an old margarine container with one page of Thursday’s newspaper, clean out the litter box, and dispose. Here’s what that looks like:
Not nearly so aesthetically pleasing as origami, but just as effective, and takes much less time. However, I’m glad I know how to do the origami version; it has lots of fun possibilities. Plus, I can never have too many skills in my auntly bag-of-tricks.
