Creative Recycling: Brown Paper Bags

1. Weed Blocker - This works GREAT for your garden or landscape! All you need is time and either mulch or a hoe or hand spade. Pull back your mulch or dig up a thin layer of top soil and place the bags down in one-layer strips...you'll need to tear the bag apart, so it lays flat. Replace the mulch or soil and viola! you've saved yourself a lot of time weeding throughout the season! The bags with degrade and you'll need repeat this each year.

(I started doing this in our landscape and it worked wonderfully....unfortunately, I ran out of free time to dedicate to this and only a small patch got done...but I didn't have to weed there!)

2. Use to bread your fried chicken! I saw this on Cooking for Real on the Food Network. Sunny Anderson put her flour and chicken in a paper bag and shook. The paper bag wicks moisture away from the breading, so you're left with a nice clump-free breaded piece of chicken! Here's the recipe for Cider-Brined Fried Chicken.

3. Ripen fruit. Put your unripe fruit in the bag, place in a dark cool spot and check occasionally to see if your fruit is ripe.

4. From chabad.org:

"To save the trouble of scraping snow and ice off your car’s windshield, place a ripped paper bag beneath the wipers when you park the car. Just peel it off in the morning."

"Remove wax from tablecloths or carpets by placing an opened brown bag on the problem and moving a warm iron over the spot-quickly. Greasy spots will appear on the bag. Move clean paper to the spot and continue until nothing appears"

5. A string of Ginger Bread people!

6. Lots of other household uses and more crafts!