My Bags: Confessions Of A Bag Hoarder

A while back, I started attacking some of my belongings that I really don't need to own anymore. We have too much stuff and while we can try not to buy a lot more, there's accumulated stuff to get rid of. I wrote about some of the shirts I got rid of here.

My bags seem like a useful collection: I try to avoid using plastic bags, so I take bags with me, but I find that my canvas bags aren't the best for grocery shopping. I have lighter-weight bags with gusseted sides that hold more and take up less space. But many of my bags hold sentimental value. They were easier to get rid of than my shirts because I had somewhere to send them. A co-worker's niece makes hand bags out of old canvas bags, so I gave them to her. Here are a few of my favorites, photographed this spring in our yard:

 Mosquito Books is in the Anchorage Airport. I bought it when I went to visit Michael during his second summer at Katmai. I was trying to get a giant CostCo bag of tortilla chips to Brooks Camp without having them reduced to crumbs. I didn't have any way to carry them on the two flights from Anchorage to Brooks and bought this. The float plane crew treated it like the most delicate cargo they had and we had a great picnic with a bunch of the Interp staff. With intact chips.

We celebrated my birthday while I was in King Salmon, I won a chowder cook-off as part of Fishtival, and then I managed to cut my finger to the bone the day before I left. I then used this bag to carry two copies of the new Harry Potter around Anchorage before sending one back to Brooks Camp for Michael and taking one on the plane with my heavily-bandaged finger. It served me well.

The Warwick Valley Farmers Market bag was one of the hardest to get rid of. I was part of the large group of folks who helped get the market started, I was its treasurer for a while, and I sold my beautiful veggies there for two years. More than just a special market, the bag itself is special because my friend Barb designed the logo and helped get our original merchandise. Barb was a great graphic designer. Her specialty was children's book catalogs and many of her rejected, coverless books are now on Darcy's shelves. She loved her puppies and her orchids. She hated removing the frogs that would fall into her pool on a regular basis. When she was sick, she ate only white foods, including white beans straight from the can. Barb died after being diagnosed with leukemia. I still miss her and her blunt opinions. I still cook with her pots and think of her every time I do.

I think it will make an exceptional hand bag.