For some reasons, plastic garbage bags played integral and unique roles at the Cedar Falls Writers’ Workshops last week. They led to to this top ten list of ways to use the crinkly things.

10. Plastic grocery bags make wonderful trash can lines. Even better than the paper bags they replaced since they are waterproof. Unless they have holes in them.

9.  Stick a couple in a packed suitcase for a dirty clothes bag.

8.  Or stick shoes in them to protect clothes from dirt and pet doo-doo stuck on the soles.

7.  In honor of Iowa’s senator, Joni Ernst, use them as boot liners to keep shoes dry.

6. After cutting flowers to send home with someone, wrap the stems with wet paper towels. Then wrap the paper towels in grocery bags so the car doesn’t get wet on the way home.

5.  They can be used in place of bread bags to make padded hangers like the ones Grandma Josie gave her grandkids when they set up housekeeping.

4.  Plastic grocery bags make highly effective asphyxiation chambers for those gross, horned tomato worms that are death to BLTs.

3.  Wad them up and use them to pad packages. This use comes compliments of my mother-in-law.

2.  After you mistake the trash can containing plastic grocery bags, in the cabin where you are staying during a writers’ conference, for the real garbage can and throw coffee grounds on the entire grocery bag stash and ruin them all, you have a humorous story to tell at the beginning of the teaching session you are leading. You can also bond with the audience by begging them to donate bags so you can replenish the cabin’s stash.

1.  In the absence of an umbrella, a grocery bag makes a stunning rain hat. Much more tasteful than the embarrassing ones worn by grandmothers in previous generations.

What creative uses do you have for plastic grocery bags? Share them in the comment  box.