What are you trying to find???

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Keep your bags handy!

This is kind of a ridiculously simple project.
At the very least it is a great big DUH project... DUH, meaning, once I did it I was all, this is such a great solution, DUH! Why didn't I do this sooner???
And why didn't I make one for every room of the house? (Well, because I haven't eaten enough oatmeal. But I am getting ahead of myself...)
Sam has a small trashcan in his room that we use for disposable diapers on the occasions he wears them (mostly when we're out and about, or if he has an extra bad diaper rash and we have to use the heavy duty not-cloth-approved diaper rash cream.) We don't have a diaper genie or one of those things that makes diaper sausages... you know what I'm talking about? Nope none of those. I think they are smelly and unnecessary. We have a small trashcan that gets dumped frequently. Much better for us. Much less smelly. We use plastic grocery and walmart bags as the liner for our can, so we need easy and frequent access to a stash of those in Sam's room. Preferably something that doesn't look like a pile of old plastic bags.
Behold!
The plastic bag holder:
 Exciting, no? I told you-- you are totally thinking: that's a stupid easy solution, why have I not done this?
Here's how the thing come together:
You are going to need:
An empty oatmeal can ( or cofffee, protein powder, etc... something tall and cylindrical with a snap on plastic lid)
About a fat quarter of fabric
spray adhesive


 Start by measuring up your can... get the height and circumference, and cut a rectangle of fabric accordingly. (add 1/2 inch to your width/circumference measurement)
 Iron down about 1/4 inch on one end of your fabric so you will have a nice clean seam where the fabric overlaps.
 Protect your work surface (I use paper bags), and spray one side of your can with the spray adhesive. line your fabric up and start smoothing it in place.
 Work your way around the cylindar, a little bit at a time smoothing as you go, until you make it all the way around, and oh look, you have that nice seam that you ironed down, lovely! Trim any edges that hang off. (or you could easily cover uneven edges by hot-gluing on some ribbon or decorative trim.)
 Grab the plastic lid and use and exacto knife and straight edge to cut a star shape in the lid.
 Now fill it full of plastic backs and place it somewhere useful! You can see mine found a hangout right next to the trashcan it will serve. Because the fabric is cute it looks nice in the room, and it's super handy having it there.
But think about how nice it would be to have one next to the trashcan in the bathroom! The office! Your bedroom! You don't even have to cover them with fabric either, if you are opposed to things of that nature. You could decoupage junk, or scrapbook paper on those things. You could spray paint them. You could put vinyl decals on them. Or you could just leave them as oatmeal cans, if you don't mind that look. It doesn't matter to me... be creative.
Now go eat some oatmeal... because once you have one, you are going to need several more. Oh, come on, it's not like you don't have the plastic bags to go around.

1 comment:

  1. Lena eats oatmeal every morning! what a great idea. :-) (i love simple too) thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete