The Washington Post - 29.08.2019

7

DC

the washington post

.

thursday, august

29

,

2019

BY NICOLE ANZIA

Jewelry, medicine, newspa-
pers, clothes, papers, craft sup-
plies and food. These are just a
few of the items I’ve seen stored
for weeks — even months or years
— in tote bags or reusable grocery
bags. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a
fan of reusable bags. But they’ve
spawned some bad habits.
Let’s be clear: Bags are for
transporting items from place to
place. They are not storage con-
tainers, and no good organiza-
tional system uses dozens of them
to compartmentalize, hide or
keep things contained for an ex-
tended amount of time. These are
the incorrect ways I see people
using bags:

To straighten up the house

If you’re using bags as a quick
way to make your house present-
able, you’re merely kicking the
ball down the road. If you dump a
bunch of odds and ends into a bag
and shove it in a closet because
you’re hosting guests, it is impera-
tive that you retrieve the bag the
next day and put the items in their
proper places. If you don’t, you
will tear your house apart looking
for something, be frustrated
when you can’t f ind it, and then go
out and buy more of it. While
you’re solving one short-term
problem, you’re also creating a
long-term one — more stuff com-
ing into your house that you don’t
need and will have to organize.

As a filing cabinet

If your desk is full of papers and
unopened mail, or if your filing
cabinet is full, it’s easy to clear off
your desk by throwing everything
into a bag with a plan to go
through it later. Out of sight, out
of mind, right? Wrong. Because
even though you don’t see those
papers anymore, you still know
they exist, and that will weigh on
you. And they’ll be harder to
make sense of if you put sorting
through them off for too long and
can’t r emember what they are and
whether you need to keep them.
Instead of taking the easy way out,
spend 30 minutes sorting, tossing
and filing. You’ll thank yourself
later — I promise.

As temporary storage bins

This is a pretty legitimate use
for a bag. You can see what needs
to be stored together and how big
a bin you need. Once you’ve con-
solidated a category of items into
a bag, however, you may feel vir-
tuous for managing to get that
step done. As a result, the next
step feels less urgent and doesn’t
happen in a timely manner. In t he

meantime, the contents of the bag

are collecting dust in an opaque,

unlabeled and unsealed bag. Not

the best way to take care of keep-

sakes.

To keep items together

For instance, people bring

home a bunch of souvenirs from a

trip, but because they are tired

and need to get back to their daily

routines, they dump them in a bag

to sort through later. And then

later becomes five years from

then. It’s better to leave those

items out so that you’re forced to

deal with them. This is also true

for kids’ artwork. Instead of mak-

ing decisions about what to keep,

hurried parents will put every-

thing into a bag in June with plans

to deal with it over the summer.

But then that bag gets put in a

closet, and before you know it, it’s

four years later. Better to leave it

out and give yourself a deadline to

deal with the contents.

As packed travel bags

I’m not talking about large tote

bags here, but rather small totes

for toiletries. Some people have as

many as a dozen toiletry cases,

making it unnecessarily difficult

to keep track of what you have. I

understand it might make sense

for people who travel frequently

to keep a set of toiletries and other

necessities packed. But often peo-

ple can’t remember if they still

have enough of something, so

they purchase more just in case,

and that purchase turns out to be

unnecessary. When this scenario

is repeated 10 times, you’ve acci-

dentally accumulated a ton of

stuff you don’t need and can’t

organize. Unpacking your bag af-

ter each trip will make it easier for

you to remember what you have

and what you don’t. It will also

make for a clean end to one trip

and new beginning for the next.

There are certain items that

can be kept in tote bags, such as

knitting supplies that you take to

different places or goggles and

sunscreen that you regularly take

to the pool. The same is true for

your work bag. But there should

only be one bag used for that

purpose. You can’t have knitting

supplies in four different bags. If

you need multiple bags for one

activity, you’ve probably got too

much stuff.

The reusable tote is clearly a

more sustainable alternative to

the single-use bag. But I don’t

think anyone envisioned these

bags as a way to store our over-

abundance of possessions. Plus,

people have way too many of

these bags. Tr y to limit your col-

lection to 10 or 12 and use them

exclusively to transport belong-

ings rather than for permanent

storage, which defeats their pur-

pose.

[email protected]

Anzia is a freelance writer and owner

of Neatnik. She can be reached at

[email protected].

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ORGANIZING

Tote bags are for toting, not everything else you use them for

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Reusable bags are great, but they’ve spawned some bad habits. Though their purpose is to transport items, people often use them as

convenient storage areas. This solves a short-term organization problem while creating a long-term one.