Save A Buck / Grocery tote instead of gift bag

Published 5:10 pm Monday, July 14, 2008

It’s a wrap: Spend a buck and save a buck and feel good about being green all at once. Wrapping paper or a gift bag, tissue, ribbon and all the gift accoutrements can add $5 or $10 to the cost of a gift. It may even cost more than the present itself.

Why not substitute a reusable grocery tote? Everyone can use one more of those handy bags since they’re so easy to grab for toting everything and often get left wherever you went with it.

Many of them cost a mere 99 cents, a whole buck cheaper than a medium-size gift bag. And don’t even think about reusing that lightweight gift bag; the paper bottom and flimsy handles would break down sobbing in the grocery aisle under the weight of a frozen pizza.

The tough totes not festive enough you say? Check out Trader Joe’s 99-cent Hawaiian-shirt print or spring for the $1.99 South Seas design.

A gift wine bottle might float around in one of the bigger bags, but there are some neat reusable wine carriers clipped to the grocery store shelves in the wine aisle that hold four or six bottles but collapse to hold just one. They’re 99 cents also.

Herald staff