Bags

Bags. Seems an obvious one to follow ‘Tea’. But here I’m talking about Ziploc bags. One of the three defining features of American domestic life: motherhood, apple pie and Ziploc bags.

When we lived in Scotland, I had been intrigued by the frequency with which Ziploc bags came into play when in the company of the American women I knew. I suppose, looking back, it was because when I saw them, it was often at group social gatherings which involved food. And where there is food, there must be Ziploc bags.

If you have them on your shopping list, you must add a good few minutes to your anticipated shopping time. The choice is bewildering. There is the basic kind, with the strip at the top that you pinch closed. Then there is the advanced kind, with a slider that you whizz across. If you want to go really up-market, you can get ones with a double strip, ones that are super-thick, ones that have a white space on them to write on, ones that are specially designed for the freezer, ones that do your ironing and read your children stories. Each type comes in a range of sizes (would you have a clue how big a bag holds a gallon? or a quart? I didn’t), and then each type and size comes in a choice of brands: Ziploc, Glad and the supermarket own brand. I like the idea of buying Glad bags. I could put my glad rags in my Glad bags. So what with choice of type, choice of size and choice of brand, I’m just grateful I learned how to do Venn diagrams at school, otherwise I wouldn’t have any chance of making a decision.

The other thing I’ve learned about Ziploc bags is that they are invaluable for things way beyond the realm of food. Playmobil bits (aaargh!), Barbie’s endless little plastic accessories and the minute scraps of material that she calls fashion-wear, half-used wax crayons that have lost their box, small pieces of games where the manufacturer didn't bother to think about how you would keep the darn thing together once you'd taken off the shrink-wrap (I offer you the monkeys in Monkey Business, or the balls in Hungry Hippos as examples), a pine cone collection, a special stones collection, 5 toothbrushes on an aeroplane, foreign coins, glow-in-the-dark stars that don't stick well on the wall but can't possibly be thrown away, errant playdough… what did I used to do with these things?

I was standing in a friend’s kitchen in England over the summer, and as she got out the cling film, I started talking to her about my conversion to Ziploc bags and how I now use them for everything. “Well,” she said, “I’m pleased to hear about it. It would be a shame if you invested years of your life settling in a foreign country, and found there was no cultural interchange at all.” Ah, those widened horizons.

Oh, and they call them ‘baggies’. I love that.

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