Gadgetry: *BleuRoo* Reusable Sandwich Bags
The thing about bringing your breakfast and lunch with you every workday is that you start using, and throwing away, an awful lot of ziploc bags. Realizing that my thriftiness might be costing the environment extra, I headed to my favorite source for unique and useful things: Etsy.
For the non-Etsy-versed, a summary:
www.etsy.com is a hub for craftspeople of all kinds–and people, like yours truly, who love owning handmade items. The wares are myriad, from the utilitarian (cleaning cloths) to the fun and fanciful (greeting cards, clothing) to the purely decorative (sconces, paintings). You name it, and it can probably be found on Etsy. Because sellers set the price, costs range from dollar-store all the way up to boutique-where-you-have-to-ask. No matter what you choose to buy or how much you spend, you can feel good about buying something made by hand, by an artisan.
Back to lunches. Greeny-crunchy people tend to flock to Etsy, so when I searched for “reusable sandwich bag,” literally hundreds upon hundreds of items popped up (a search today yields 2,789 results). They seemed to come in every conceivable print, and a little research proved many of them similar in quality. I tagged several sellers as “favorites” and kept shopping around.
In the end, I kept coming back to the same seller: BleuRoo. Her bags had everything I wanted: they were sizeable, they were thick, they were machine-washable, they closed with velcro, and they were lined in food-safe nylon that I could easily wipe down. The clincher: they were simple. I tire of wacky patterns pretty quickly. The price was right, too: a set of three would cost me $17.00 or a little under $5.70 per bag with shipping. After a couple weeks of deliberation, I hit the order button.
My bags arrived Saturday(!) I gleefully opened the package, and I wasn’t disappointed.
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- 8 x 8-inch beauties (she makes smaller ones too)
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- sewn with care
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- stay closed and easy to clean
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- the cozy grapes agree
I have used them for two days now, and I am very pleased. They have held PB&Js, carrot pieces, beautiful yellow wax beans, and shiny N.Y. State apples. Tonight, I filled one with crunchy vegetables and another with sweet luscious fruit. Yum! (And a conscionable yum, as cannot be said for my ill-fated cheap chicken.)
Reusable bags aren’t any cheaper than regular ziplocs, at least not until a while after you start using them. According to a collaborative estimate by me and Dima, it will take 30 weeks (7.4 months) before mine start paying for themselves. I do see myself bringing lunch for that long, and longer, so I feel good about my purchase despite the lengthy budget payoff wait. In the meantime, I can feel good about the number of plastic bags I am not discarding. As I like to tell myself, I can have it all–just not necessarily all at the same time.
On the day I bought my fabulous BleuRoo bags, I did get everything I wanted at once. One click later, I ordered a sandwich wrap from another seller. I tend to bring big, messy sandwiches (whether bookended in pancakes or bread), and they need a wrap-type package to hold them together. I’ll review it as soon as I can test-wrap it.
Next on my Etsy wishlist, whenever I have the cash: a set of reusable produce bags from seller ecofriendly4u (I’m a bit tired of wasting all those pull-and-tear bags in the produce section). Not that I wouldn’t accept them as a very, very early Chanukah gift. 
Til next time, be well!
Lyz
October 21st, 2009 at 9:10 am #
Tania-
This is so freaking brilliant it hurts. I even passed on the link to a newsletter (everywun.com) that highlights a lot of those small things you can do that have a big impact.
Haven’t seen you in ages, but loving the blog. Hope all is well!
Lyz
admin
October 21st, 2009 at 10:16 am #
Wow Liz, thank you so much! I really appreciate your support and your passing on the link. Thanks for reading!