I love garbage.
Living generally clutter-free is important to me, but I do tend to squirrel away trash like it’s gonna appreciate in value over time.
I am always finding ways to use it, I keep my collection clean and organized, and I go through everything regularly to cull items I wasn’t able to repurpose. This helps me keep things generally tidy and clutter-free.
But I love using what I have on hand instead of buying new, so I keep caches of materials like cardboard, paper, plastic, glass, and wood for building and crafting. They come in handy for gardening especially. I’ll even shimmy a knife into zip ties to disengage the lock and reuse them.
Anyway, I thought I’d share some of the ways that I like to use my garbage! Today we’re doing an easy one: Brown paper bags.
Here are a few ways I’ve found to repurpose paper bags.
Gift wrap
If your brown paper bags aren’t stamped with a brand, they make great gift bags! You can also decorate and paint them for extra cuteness, or cut them up for wrapping paper on small packages.
I also save brown paper packing material to use for gift wrap, since it’s usually in longer sheets.
Garbage bags & organization
Paper grocery bags fit perfectly in my bathroom trashcans and in my fridge basket where I toss items for compost.
I also use them to organize materials–paper scraps, cardboard, styrofoam packing materials, etc. They all line up neatly on a shelf, and they’re easy to grab and take with me for projects.
They’re good to write on with Sharpie, too, so I can label everything easily.
Donations
If you’re decluttering your house, these bags are great for donations! They’re usually sturdy and often have convenient handles.
When the thrift store throws them out (hopefully they reuse them until they tear), that’s decomposable paper going back into the earth–not plastic that will live for another thousand years.
Pet enrichment
If you’ve got pet cats or rats, paper bags are usually a big hit. They love to bat them around, tear them up, and use them to build nests.
Many pet shelters even accept paper bags as donations for enrichment toys.
Crafts
Brown paper is such a solid crafting material for painting, drop cloths, paper maché, and origami.
Since they’re so durable and neutral, you can paint, stain, and even soak them in dyes to make all kinds of cool-looking decor and art.
Here are a few tutorials to give you ideas:
- Easy Paper Bag Crafts for Fall Decorating
- Paper Bag Crafts For Kids
- Creative Paper Bag Upcycle Crafts
Gardening
I love brown paper in the garden. It has so many uses!
Layers. First off, you can use paper as a base layer under mulch or at the bottom of your plant beds. It acts as a weed barrier, plus breaks down into nutrients over time. Newspaper works well too, but some people worry about the ink in the soil–no such worry with brown paper bags.
Compost. You can use paper bags as brown matter in your compost piles. Just tear it up and toss it in!
Note: Be sure to layer heavier things on top–otherwise the wind is likely to grab pieces and toss them around your yard.
Seedling pots. I’ve been on a mission to find the best way to turn paper bags into seedling starters, and I gotta say–finally cracked it. I started with paper maché style containers formed on small bottles, but they didn’t have the structural integrity I was looking for without adding ingredients.
Then I learned how to fold them! I used this YouTube tutorial, experimented with different sizes, and here are my results:
I can make four little seedling containers for each bag. They hold up great. Depending on how much they deteriorate by planting time, I’ll either put the whole thing in the ground or remove the plant and toss the container into my compost pile.
How do you use paper bags?
You can kind of use them anywhere you’d use paper, plus they’re tough, durable, and will adapt to any shape you push them into. There are endless uses for them!
What are your favorite ways to repurpose paper bags?
Read next: How To Reduce Kitchen Waste
