Clever way to store rubber bands

Wrap them around a tube of some sort like an empty paper towel holder? I don't keep them, but you're smart to do so.

I used to keep bags of rubber bands for children's activities. (Second graders made shoe box guitars.) Like you, I kept them in Ziplock bags. I squashed bags flat to squeeze out as much air as possible. You have a lot of rubber bands. Maybe they need to be in another drawer or closet. I don't think storing them stretched would be a good idea.

I squish mine to remove air but they bloat up again. I'm thinking maybe just taking out of drawer and hanging somewhere...I also think wrapping around tube would hurt elasticity

I think this is a great idea:

These are hair elastics, but would work for rubber bands.

Not helpful because I am so grossed out by rubber bands. I will never touch them. Am I the only one? Adding that a hair tie with a coating i do but a rubber band is a huge no.

If you accumulate them so fast or so many at a time that storage is an issue I'd first consider that just maybe you don't need to keep all of them. Keep the size/ shape ones you know that you actually use and only in the number that you really need.

@oly, that's how I keep my hair bands and that very kind as gentler on hair. I reckon I can get a big carabiner keep a few rubber bands of each size as Veda suggests.

Thanks all!

I use a carabiner, too. I don't keep every rubber band I come across though. I have enough and have no problem tossing.

For rubber bands, when the bag gets bulky, that suggests that you've accumulated more than you need or use. Why not throw away new ones that come along?

Put 'em into a bag as you described, as orderly as convenient, to keep bulk down.

Pull the zipper just over 3/4 of the way across, put the opening into your mouth and suck, then pull the zipper the rest of the way across - that's before any of the air gets back in, of course.

That may take care of the problem.

If you have a basement with open joists, hammer a couple of nails into the side of one, about 6" apart, tie a loop onto one end of a piece of string about a foot or a bit more long and tie the other end to one of the nails.

Hang the bands of one size on an empty toilet paper roll, or a smaller tube if some of the bands are shorter - but best not to stretch 'em.

Slip the roll carrying the bands over the hanging end of string, hang the loop at the end over the other nail.

Use a similar situation for bands of other sizes, depending on how much you want to keep the ones of different sizes separated.

Can't think of a better idea at the moment.

ole joyful

I keep mine in a small tin I got at Christmas years ago.

It alternates between sitting on my desk or residing in a drawer.

I keep a few in a kitchen drawer, but the bulk of them are in the freezer, were they stay fresh and do not dry out. Getting snapped by a broken band hurts!

I have a tin on top of the fridge for my rubber bands.

Texas_Gem - do they jump out like snakes?

Hi skibby ... for a comment like that ...

... don't you figure that you should be canned?

o j

I'm reasonably certain that I don't have one rubber band in the house.

Where in the world are you all getting these rubber bands?? I rarely have more than 3 at a time.

mostly whole foods

I have a clear plastic 30 ounce, MAYO bottle that I keep for the sugar water I make for the hummingbirds. That would be ideal for your rubber bands.

I keep my rubber bands in a clear plastic oval shaped jar that says KRAFT on each side at the top. I've been using it for so long I don't even remember what came in it. It is almost full again. When it was full the last time I gave the bands to my DGGS to take home and make a ball with. So there are several reasons why some of us keep them!

Rubber bands come with the mail and many things from the grocery store. They don't weird me out as much as they do Anne. I even did a series of ink drawings about rubber bands in school. Still, I hate dealing with them, so I dribble them around wherever they are and the rubber band fairy comes along behind me and puts them on a ball. I know it stretches them out, but the good news is the newest ones are always on top, for the few times I do need one (unlike the throw them out if your bag is full theory, which leaves the oldest, most decayed ones for use), and I don't have to deal with them otherwise. :) The real issue is getting the rubber band fairy to come to your house on a regular basis (I do throw them away if the fairy goes on holiday).

Why are you sane people hoarding rubber bands?

I don't get many, just the heavy blue ones that come on broccoli. I save my cereal liners for kitty litter and wrapping a rubber band around it keeps it secure. That's when I have the large bands. The blue ones aren't good for much.

I save and re-use rubber bands all the time. When I get too many I put them in an envelope and give them back to the mail delivery person. If he can use them fine--I've saved the government a few pennies. If not, he can toss them--better his trash than mine.

I keep them in a ziploc bag with the air squeezed out, in a drawer with other office supplies.

O J, yuck--sucking air out of a bag of those used rubber bands? :P

Gotta hoard something....else show producers will never call me

Hi, mamagoose ... O.K. , if the dirt troubles you ... wash 'em first.

If it's the proximity - use a drinking straw.

When I was a kid, we were told that we had to eat a peck (half of a quart) of dirt before we died (but not all at one sitting).

Did we have fewer allergic reactions and troubles with lack of good bugs to fight the nasty ones when we were kids? We developed our immunities, step by step.

Yeah, I know - a lot of us died at an early age which modern medicine and drugs have been great helps in alleviating. But ... now our highly vaunted anti-biotics ... are losing their punch ... and we have almost no back-ups.

Can anyone spell "vulnerability"?

ole joyful

Rhizo, not hoarding. Just keeping some. A couple decades ago I had to buy a packet of rubber bands because I used more than came my way. Since then, they get delivered to my house, so there's always one when I need one, thanks to the rubber band fairy's rubber band ball. If it were bigger than a baseball, you could say hoarding. I don't even know if it would work because the bands would be overstretched. If it stays between squash and raquetball sized, it's not a hoard! And there are many more sizes, styles and colors in the ball than in that packet I paid for!

This topic makes me laugh. Good for all of you who save them. Is there a name for a phobia about rubber bands? They not only squick me out they make me have a serious panic attack. So maybe the folks who save them are the sane ones.....LOL

mine are in a baggie(zip top) held up by a strong magnet.

Skibby- no snakes in my house, except the bull who pretended to be a rattler while I was in labor with my last in 2013.

I should note though that the tin contains not only spare rubber bands but also extra twist ties.

Perhaps the intermingled twist ties prvent the rubber bands from jumping?

I used to keep em on a shower curtain hook that I hung on a picture hook inside the kitchen sink cabinet door.

O J whether through a gap in the bag or a straw, the air is the same. I'm not squeamish about touching the dirty rubber bands, and believe me, you are preaching to the choir regarding the other issues. But I'd rather eat dirt than transfer it directly to my lungs. ;)

Glad others had good suggestions for you! Mine wasn't as good as it could've been. I like the carabiner idea. I will use that for my hair loops. And after reading this thread, I think it's time to disinfect them along with all the brushes (including makeup) and combs in the house.

___________________

OJ, I've eaten plenty of dirt and I still get sick. Dang ;)

That was the one disagreement my MIL had (that I can remember?). She wiped my boy's hands while he was eating?! I asked her if she could please let him finish eating. She said, I never let my son's hands get dirty. I cannot remember what I said specifically, but it was along the lines of great. way to make someone OCD. Oops! I'd not do it again, and I wish I could take it back. At least I learned something.

There are two issues here:. If you use something but can NEVER find one when needed, it's a storage problem. If you have more than you know what to do, It's a hoarding problem or to put it kindly an "overstock" problem. I use my rubber bands but I have an over stock prob. I plan to go with carabiner or shower curtain ring and hang somewhere handy. Any bands that don't fit I will discard w/o guilt. Appreciate everybody's input as it always exposes me to aspects I had not considered, thank you

If you have gone to the effort of wrapping them into a ball, won't the short one near the top be overstretched: such use shortens their life, doesn't it?

If you have various uses that require various sizes, whether of length or thickness, if they're wrapped in a ball ... won't you have to dismantle, dismantle, dismantle ... until the right one comes off of the ball?

Added to which .. do you add to your workload by re-wrapping the unwrapped ones, lying there, whether in a pile or scattered? Or discard them ... in which case, the original effort of wrapping them has more or less gone for nought, hasn't it?

I don't think of myself as inordinately lazy ... but that's an exercise that I want to plan to do without.

My original suggestion (using a couple of nails, string and maybe a toilet paper roll or thinner tube) provided for having the various kinds kept separate (if you have the room ... and an unfinished basement).

Good wishes for achieving your goal, bossy vossy ... without overstretching either your brain or the elastics.

(Hmm-m-m ... seems to me there was some discussion of how to deal with problems relating to overstretched elastics, around here, some time ago. I think that it got resolved, didn't it ... if not to everyone's satisfaction?).

ole joyfuelled

I keep some in a small jar that once held pre-chopped garlic. I do the same with twist ties and paper clips. Keeps me from 'saving' every one that comes into the house.

I don't use many rubber bands and it's frustrating to get one only to have it snap because it deteriorated over years. Keeping only a small amount reduces that possibility.

OJ, yes to all your questions about the ball. Before the advent of the rubber band fairy, I just put them in a little well in my desk and discarded the old ones before adding new ones, but they'd wander around the drawer and my current desk doesn't have the little well. The trick to the ball is never to let it get big enough to over stretch the bands. If they're new enough to use, the moderate stretching doesn't seem to hurt them. I've never had to peel off more than half a dozen to get to the right size/shape/stiffness, and I leave the detritus for the fairy to fix. I don't know what to do if there's no rubber band fairy to make the ball. I like the closed clip ideas...

Some people are troubled by throwing anything away. It's usually not a case of being practical, and often is a result of being needlessly stingy or cheap. These reasons and others can be at the heart of clutter and hoarding.

Very few people need to "store" rubber bands, or even have a supply of them. Having a few in one regular place is organization, having many (and in excess of expected use) is disorganization. I'll guess that those who think keeping a "supply" is necessary probably have an oversupply in their homes of many more things than just rubber bands.

I have a zip lock bag of various sizes I bought at some point. They are in the office supplies drawer in the office. When I need one I know exactly where to go. Not something I ever think about lol. The ones that come on roses and flowers I cut off so they go in the trash.

Oh here's another one I bet some people save in something. The cotton that comes in bottles, like aspirin, vitamin, etc. I have a zip lock bag of cotton balls in the bathroom with the other bathroom supplies I occasionally will save a large piece of cotton in the same baggie. But certainly not all.

The medicine cotton I put in compost pile

Oh! It never occured to me to put the cotton in the compost, but it makes sense.

I'm very fussy about cotton balls. If they're not Johnson's they have to be indistinguishable. When I was young and living abroad where there were no cotton balls (just loose cotton in weird colors and strange pads), my mother airmailed me some!

Keeping rubber bands in an air tight bag makes sense because one primary aging factor is oxidation and other active stuff in the air such as pollutants. I have found that many rubber bands I have that are over 3 years old become weak and subject to breakage.

I do not depend on rubber bands for long term storage of items. I have found too many bundles of stored paper items with destroyed rubber bands after 5 years. Most rubber bands are made with ordinary low cost rubber that has little resistance to aging factors.

Before

After. Discarded about 3/4 of them. I had close to 100, ridiculous!

I seldom get rubber bands, so don't really save any, have no need for them.

Sue

I have zero rubber bands, and am fascinated by those of you who save them! I save nothing, really. I grew up with people who didn't throw anything away - ever - and I'm totally on the opposite end of the spectrum. I've never even NEEDED a rubber band!

So hard for me to imagine! No use for a rubber band, or close facsimile? If I didn't have all those rubber bands coming to my house, I'd buy some poly bands. They're like those thin bands that look like little rubber bands for your hair but don't tangle. They make bigger ones for binding things, which are equally lovely.

I buy a thin block of cheese about 9" long and like to fold the open end back over the block to keep it from drying out and a rubber band makes it much easier to handle ... actually, several rubber bands, of graduated lengths.

My son buys long thin balloons with hundreds in a bag to blow up and twist into various shapes, e.g. flowers, animals, etc. to happify kids at festivals and often has some lying around. Sometimes there are a few around my place, and I've tied them into a circle at various lengths when I needed one of a different size than the ones available.

True - best not to use them to hold stuff that need to be together, long term, as they get sick and die after a couple of years.

Can use 'em to put around the sun shield on your car to hold some frequently-used papers that don't have a good place to sit, elsewhere: keeps it/them up out of the way (or getting lost) ... or trampled under foot, which has a detrimental effect on most non-plastic covered papers. I carry some papers that get get carried around quite a lot in a plastic bag

Make a list of the different circuits from your electrical box, fasten it to the door of the box with an elastic band ... or - you could glue it, or use sticky tape If you haven't figured all of which plug/light is on which circuit, gets difficult to do a write-in if it's under plastic, may be unhandy if it's glued. Rubber band allows much more freedom of temporary portability of the stuff corralled.

ole joyful

This thread inspired me to make rubber band balls as cat toys. Kitties are having fun with them. :-)

Have you heard about the guy with two 5-gallon drums of string too short to save?

Hi starsplitter,

If you tie enough of 'em together, (that's those short pieces of string - not the 5-gal drums) they'll hold the flaps at the top of a small cardboard box in which you're storing supplies, etc. straight up from the sides, so that they don't flop over to interfere with moving nearby objects, sight lines, etc.

Actually, were you to tie enough of 'em together, they could go around the drums about 4 times, thus possibly strong enough to hold the drums together, as long as they weren't filled with too heavy stuff.

As to those stars that you split ... do you use one of those wood block splitters that folks use to split short blocks of wood cut from tree trunks for use in one's cooking range in the kitchen, or furnace?

If it's the kids' stars that they get for proficiency in kindergarten, how about a knife?
No - too dangerous ... better use a pair of scissors - and not of the sharp-pointed kind.

ole joyful

Ole Joyful,

Then you could store more stuff (like rubber bands) in the pails.

<As to those stars that you split ... do you use one of those wood block splitters that folks use to split short blocks of wood cut from tree trunks for use in one's cooking range in the kitchen, or furnace?>

Two Tramps in Mud Time http://www.etymonline.com/poems/tramps.htm

and another: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173537