Hello again! I hope to find you all well and ready to save some money while being clever. Today's project was quite interesting. I got this pattern for making reusable sandwich wraps from, of all places, the Internet. My daughter has become a hipster and is always looking for ways to be greener. When I told her about this project she was very excited. Here is the website I got the instructions from:
http://www.chicaandjo.com/2010/02/01/fused-plastic-sandwich-wraps/ Now let me warn you they tell you that fusing the grocery bags is difficult and they are right. I tried it over and over and couldn't get it to fuse everywhere. It would fuse in some spots but not others. I even tried using my heat gun. Don't do that. It's not pretty. In the instructions it talked about using a gallon sized clear plastic storage bag
(like Ziploc) to cover the fused grocery bags if you are worried about the safety of the grocery bag. I pondered on that point and thought "Hey, wouldn't be easier to just cut the zipper off the storage bag and sew that to the cloth?" You know what, it was. The whole project went a lot easier after I threw the grocery bags in the recycle bin. I couldn't get the 12x12 size it called for in the instructions so I just trimmed the edges to make it square. To the fabric I measured one inch extra on all sides and continued like the instructions said. Alas, no cute saying in my wrap but I can always add a little pocket to the outside of the fabric before sewing so I can slip a note inside for my child to read. I can just see my teenager rolling her eyes and blushing as she opens her note in the school cafeteria. Oh, I am definitely adding a pocket now. After I made this bag I wondered how it would hold up with the sandwich in it. Would it still be fresh at lunch time? So, I made a gourmet peanut butter and jelly sandwich, put it in the wrap and set it aside for five hours. It was still fresh and yummy. I was curious and looked for some other ways to make these bags and found some pretty cool looking ones. This one is my favorite and I think I'm going to make some of these. You can find it here http://www.craftstylish.com/item/43227/how-to-make-a-reusable-sandwich-wrap There are tons more out there. I just typed in reusable sandwich wrap in the search bar. All this is great but did I save money? Yes I did. The box of storage bags I got on sale for less than $2.00. I used leftover material from other projects. I pack three lunches a day, five days a week. Counting only the sandwich that's sixty bags a month. I can get 20 bags at the Dollar Store for, wait for it...a dollar. Long story short....Bags for the sandwiches alone would have cost me $36.00 for the year. This project cost me just pennies per wrap. So I would say the sandwich wrap savings would be $2.75 per month. Not much on its own but for the year it would add up. Also, that saves the landfills about a thousand bags a year from my family alone. That's my adventure for the day. Savings for this month with my prior balance of $17.50 is now $20.25. Cool beans! Join me tomorrow as I try my hand at baking. Frozen biscuits in the store aren't that expensive and who has time to make biscuits from scratch every morning. I am going to try making the biscuits and then freezing them and then baking them later. Wish me luck. I am already nervous about this one. <3
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