Many people are choosing to reduce waste by bringing their own grocery bags with them when they shop. I’ve been looking for one that I would like for awhile now. I have a few random canvas bags floating around the house, but I found that I never remembered to bring them into the store with me, even if I gathered them and left them in the car they just sat there and I walked out with a bunch of plastic bags yet again.

I found these ChicobBags online and I love them! They have a unique design where they fold up into themselves into a very small pouch. The pouch has a key fob on it so you can secure your bag to your keys or together. Because of their small size, I can always keep a few in my purse and that way I never forget them in the car (well, except for those really impressive days where I grab the kids (hopefully my keys) and go shopping with my purse still in the car *sigh*).

With reusable bags becoming a growing trend the baggers at our commissary and Costco are used to seeing all sorts of bags coming through the line, however, when I bring these bags in I get a lot of attention and a lot of questions! I have had to give out the website to more than one person in line with me, as the portable design is such a great draw. As soon as the baggers realize just how much they can fit inside them and how strong they are, I end up passing the web address along to them as well!

Here are some pics of my baggers having some fun. They really loved these bags.

Ok, this is cool.

Opening these is fun! Look at how little these are in their pouches! (This particular bagger looked at me like I was crazy when I said I had my own bags and brought these out- she told me she couldn’t figure out what I expected her to bag into those tiny pouches!)

Look! If I hold it up, it looks like a dress! (Seriously, I had some fun baggers that day!)

The full one has 1 and half gallons of milk as well as six frozen orange juices and a family size tub on yogurt.

Ok- enough silly pics of my baggers! Let’s talk about these bags.

Now, Chico has a few different styles, so I’m going to tell you about my favorites.

Vita Bag: I love this one. This is the bag that holds up to 40 pounds of groceries. It can easily fit 2 gallons of milk and a party sized veggie tray. I’m not joking- I’ve done this! My favorite thing about this bag is that the straps are shoulder straps so I can carry the weight on my shoulders and carry more with my hands. This means I unload the car faster. Because of the strength of the material, I don’t worry about the bag tearing and spilling everything everywhere; I just stuff it and go.

Original: This holds up to 25 pounds and is wide enough to fit Costco sized containers of food. It is also super tough and shrinks down to a tiny pouch.

The rePETe Original: This one is great because it is made from 99% recycled materials. It makes sense to make bags out of recycled water bottles, particularly when the goal is to reduce waste in the first place!

If you go to ChicoBag right now they have a great deal where if you buy 4 you get the 5th free. And If you leave me a comment, I’ll enter you in a drawing to win 2 ChicoBags of your very own!

Clearly I need to buy a few more myself. You guys should know, this is a major grocery trip for me, and usually I would have had about 20 plastic bags for this amount of food. Because of how much the Chicobags can carry, 5 Chicobags carried all but 4 plastic bags worth.

Happy Shopping!