This $20 Gadget Perfectly Wrangled My Dozens of Reusable Bags

​​Hi, my name is Lauren and I have a confession to make: I cannot stop buying reusable shopping bags. 

Now, in my defense, I do live in Fairfield, Connecticut, where plastic bags are not permitted at the grocery stores, making it somewhat mandatory that you bring along your own bags. In the event that you forget them (hi, it’s me), you can pay for brown paper bags. There’s no pressure, but I always feel guilty if I don’t use reusable bags — even if that means buying more on the spot. Hence, my collection has seriously multiplied!

I try to store reusable bags in my trunk, but when I do remember to bring them into the store, that means filling them with groceries and lugging them into my house — and often accidentally leaving them there. Of course, a then-empty trunk means buying more bags during my next grocery run. And then the whole process repeats itself.

This may be a good time to confess that I’ve also amassed an overflow of gift bags because I always buy more than I need. When my daughter gets invited to a birthday party, rather than just buy one gift bag, I purchase a few so we have options. Or when there’s major events around here, such as our birthdays or holidays like Hanukkah, and we get gifts in gift bags, I can’t bring myself to throw them away. I tell myself they’re too pretty or too expensive and that I can save money by reusing them the next time I have a gift to wrap. But here’s the thing: I’ll then find myself at, say, Target, and become all googly-eyed by their pretty bag selection, completely forgetting what I already have at home. 

So, with all that backstory, I’m happy to report that I found a product that has finally gotten me out of this vicious cycle. Enter: the YouCopia StoraBag Reusable Shopping Bag Organizer!

This product is set up like a file holder. It has four tall, adjustable dividers that snap in to create custom-sized compartments (meaning you can use them for paper gift bags or heavier stock reusable bags) and hold bags within them upright. It can fit and organize over 20 bags. I actually have two of them — one in my garage and one in my car — and plan on ordering another for my basement.

The thing I love about it most? The sheer simplicity of it. It so efficiently gets the job done that it makes you wonder, Why didn’t I think of that? 

It’s made my bag obsession a lot more manageable for a few reasons. First, the organizer itself doesn’t take up a lot of space, even with the bags in it. You know what did take up a lot of space? All of my bags strewn all over the place. I would stuff them into each other, which was bulky and made it hard to know what or how many I had. I would try to hang them on racks, which never worked — they would just fall to the floor. And in the trunk of my car, I’d end up with a mess of bags intertwined with umbrellas, ice scrapers, and other random items. 

With this organizer, I can clearly see the bags I have, easily remove and use the one I want without making an even bigger mess, and put a bag back after I’m done with it. It’s eliminated a level of chaos from my house (bag chaos, that is) that I am truly grateful to have under control!