What do plastic bags and Command picture hanging strips have in common?

I'm fortunate to get to recycle my plastic bags with my weekly recycling. I know you can also take them back to Wal-Mart and other places for recycling, but often we all like to keep some on hand for various reasons. Storing them in a handy, out-of-the-way place can be a challenge.

During my first trip to Ikea after we moved to Michigan, I purchased one of these handy-dandy plastic bag dispensers. You can click on the picture to take you right to the Ikea website if you can't stand it and have to purchase one for yourself. Bags not included.

It comes with directions on how to attach it to a wall or interior of a cabinet door. My friend Monica had it attached inside one of her cabinet doors in her kitchen. I didn't want to do that, and I didn't want to put it on a wall. Why, you ask?

Well, at some point in the hopefully near future (meaning next two years) I hope to transform the mud room area into an actual mud room and not empty space, and I also hope to put up an elfa closet system in the laundry room and the large closet that is directly off of it. That means if I attached the bag dispenser to any of those walls, more than likely I would have to move it.

So with my ingenuity in hand, I thought of a fantastic alternative, because I despise my washing machine and care nothing about defacing it.

Plus Command strips come right off without any defacing if done properly.

See, I had purchased some of the new Command picture hanging strips to hang up some posters of the boys that were in poster frames. The thing was, most of the hardware on the backs had been damaged in the move, so I was going to have to buy new frames. Then I saw an advertisement for these wonderful things and I knew I was saved.

I had some left over and used them for the bag dispenser on the washer. Worked like a gem. They are kind of like velcro without being velcro. More like plastic-y velcro.

These are the boys' posters I hung up with some of the strips. I only used a couple on the smaller one, but three or four on the larger ones.

If you haven't tried them and are thinking about them, they are fantastic!

So is the Ikea bag dispenser!