Recycled T-Shirt Market Bags

James and I have settled into a Sunday afternoon routine of going to Goodwill, heading over to Zaxby's to share a Zalad, then doing our grocery shopping for the week. We are blessed to have parents that love taking our kiddos home with them after church to spend the afternoon so Sunday afternoon has become our designated "just us" time. It is summer vacation so the kids are with us most days at work so they enjoy the time away from us as well :) It all started with this white t-shirt on the end.... a cool Maine t-shirt with this big lobster claw on it. James has lost a lot of weight over the past several months, but sometimes he thinks he is smaller than he actually is. I told him when we got home there was no way he could wear this thing to which he replied he thought it would be cool if I wore it. Um, no thanks.... cool shirt, but I am not wearing it. I have never been to Maine and I don't care to have a big claw across my chest. So there it sat on the back of a chair in the bedroom for oh, about 3 weeks now.

Rewind a couple of years.... I bought several of those recycled grocery totes (I can't even remember the brand now) and was super proud of my perfect rainbow of bags. Kind of when they first started to become "the thing". I kept them neatly in a bowl on the counter so I could grab some to take to the store when I went out. I really used them but eventually they have been lost or misplaced one by one and I have fallen back into my plastic bag ways. Then came my light bulb moment. While making bags from t-shirts is not my original idea and not the light bulb moment, deciding I would recycle that shirt so I could get some use out of it was. The whole project takes less than 5 minutes and I can sit back and smile that I have accomplished something. I went to the local thrift store last week to pick up a few more t-shirts for the project. I love fun shirts that feature places or have cool pictures in general. I think I am going to make a couple of super simple ones that don't even bother with finished edges and I may make a couple that are actually lined with another layer for a more finished bag. I need to figure out a way to have them roll up easily for better storage and I am going to plan on keeping them in a basket on the counter. You can find tutorials all over the internet for making grocery bags and you can spend days looking at Tipnut's site.

So, pull out those old cotton t-shirts from that concert back in the day (um, you don't have a New Kids on the Block shirt lurking around do you?) that you won't dare wear in public but just can't bare to part with and whip a few up. Come on, I know you have some. Every time you reach for that bag for groceries (or hauling around whatever) you can re-live the fun memories. We will share our finished bags later this week :)

(Pictured: T-shirt grocery bag by MarthaStewart.com)