I prefer scented and use the walmart brand with the drawstring. As I have a tilt out cabinet for garbage, I don't want odors to build. They are not as strong as name brands but I don't over-fill and take them out daily. I do not buy bags for the small waste baskets, I just use shopping bags twisted tightly around the top and knotted under in the back.

I remember the paper grocery bags for trash and how we folded the top edge down about 2 inches to keep it open.

Just an idea for your landlord:

In my apartment they collect bagged trash 5 days a week from one's doorstep. One can also go to the dumpster. The apartments charge about $27/month for the trash service, a mandatory charge.

To me, that is a plus for everyone. The tenants don't have to take time to go to the dumpster, the dumpster area is neater, plus an unseen advantage is that with this service trash and garbage does not tend to accumulate inside apartments which can also encourage rats and bugs.

I love the scented garbage bags. Those twist ties were a pain as a lot of times the ties would be lost so I remember having to cut a strip off the top to use as a tie!

I have a tiny garbage can in my kitchen, and the same size for recycling, also in my kitchen. It is small enough to use walmart type plastic grocery bags. You know, the kind you carry your stuff out to the car in. I purposely bought such a small garbage can, to keep from having garbage accumulate in my house. It gets emptied weekly, sometimes more often, sometimes less. Smelly crap gets dumped in there, and the bag pulled out, and taken out to the big garbage can outside the house. I detest smelly garbage! Meat scraps are put in the same type of bag and put in the freezer, and added to the garbage on garbage pickup day.

I really hate paying for bags to put in the garbage. I do take cloth grocery bags to the stores.... and collect plastic grocery bags from friends, that can't be bothered to take cloth/recycle bags with them.

We also have a waste basket lined with the same kind of bags in each room, cept the dining/living room, where I have a basket for recyclable paper. This is so close to the kitchen that one can go there to toss tissues or what ever.

There are only two of us... and Charlotte used to use a bigger garbage can/bag, and never toss it till it was full. She agreed to my way, as first of all she doesn't have to buy bags, and second she agreed about the smell.

Moni

Back in the Dark Ages when I was growing up we had three means of trash disposal, and none involved plastic bags, I'm not sure they had been invented yet LOL. We had an unlined trash container beneath the kitchen sink. Into it went combustibles, which when full went to a stone 'fireplace' with a heavy metal grill on top, in the back yard, to be burned. Any and all things that could be burned were.

All biologic garbage, aka kitchen scraps, was dumped into the 'garbage pail', also in the back yard, immediately upon generation. The garbage pail was a round concrete open-ended tube with a metal grill on the bottom into which a metal pail with a long bail slid into. This contraption was buried in the ground. It had a solid metal cover that was opened by a foot pedal. Garbage was collected weekly by a local pig operation.

All other garbage went into the unlined container beneath the sink, and when full was transferred to metal cans with covers and stored in our garage. Once a week these cans were hauled to curbside for municipal pick up. We had very little trash left for pickup, so only a couple cans per week.

My mom saved all our brown paper bags, and they were used for storage, transportation of 'stuff', and for mandatory school textbook covers.

Today I have a plastic bag lined trash container in the open in my kitchen. The container is made of wood and looks like a piece of furniture. All combustibles go in there, cans go outside into a plastic lined covered metal container on my deck, and kitchen scraps go out back into the woods to feed whatever. I have virtually no kitchen scraps. We have no municipal trash pickup, so cans go to the 'Convenience Center', an oxymoron if there ever was one, along with combustible trash. All in plastic bags, taken by me. Most of my combustibles I use as kindling for brush I burn when I clear land.

Most everything I buy locally is carried home in 'Walmart bags', small plastic bags with handles. I use these for the same things my mom used paper bags for, with the exception of book covers. I also use them for balling woody plants I move, removing them upon planting of course. I always have more of these bags than I can use, so many get thrown out.

Rats can tear through any plastic bag you use.

KennsWoods formerly kentrees -- Your post about the old days' trash disposal made me grin, as it was very close to what was done when I was a child. Any combustibles were carried down to the cellar (Note: not a basement, but a cellar, lol) to be burned in the pot-bellied stove. This was an additional source of heat in the winter in our drafty 1820s farmhouse. And I remember the local pig farmer collecting the wet garbage from the in-ground pail which was accessed by a step-on pedal. Its lid was very heavy metal, but still could not foil the clever raccoons who figured out how to open it now and then during the night...

No plastic bags, of course. And when I was very young, we opened the other end of tin cans and flattened them, a holdover from WW2.

Where we live now has recycling pickup at the door twice a month and regular trash every week, as well as a town recycling station where my husband has volunteered since we moved here over 20 years ago.

We get 13 gallon Hefty bags from Costco. They hold up pretty well. We go through about one a day inside the house. I keep another 13 gallon trash can in the garage. Assuming it is only 'dry' trash that goes in there, that trash can may only get emptied once a week or so.

Store bags are used for cleaning kitty litter and random small clean ups or bathroom trash liners. I have these huge bags for lawn trash that came from Costco. They work really well for all of my outdoor clean up.

We use Glad flexible tall kitchen bags, unscented. They rarely split, if ever. I buy them in large quantity when on sale. I cannot stand scented bags. They smell worse than my own trash and the scent gives me a headache. The county issues those automated garbage cans a few years back so we don’t have a problem with anything getting into our trash. I also have a small compost bucket, and I empty it in my compost bin about twice a week.

My husband drives me wacko about the trash cans. We have no recycling center close to us except the next town over and you must live in that township I don't. My husbands work place has a big dumpster....if employees pay 20 $ a month you can drop 1 bag any size off everyday of the week. This is absolutely worth the price for me. But....hubs wants 3 cans in my kitchen one for papers one for cans/glass one for food scraps...this is ridiculous IMO since it all goes to the same place and goes out daily. I prefer 1 can with a tall white bag and a plastic ice cream bucket lined with plastiic grocery bags for food scraps that can than be tied up and put into the larger can. I win this argument but he complains all the time. Lol.....I use Great Value tall white bags. Works for me.

I use about one 13-gallon bag per week, just for the two of us. Tie top, no drawstrings, no scent. I think the big roll I have came from Aldi. That is basically food scraps (no meat at home) and packaging that can't be recycled. We don't have trash pickup, but we have a "convenience center" at the end of the road, so it's easy to drop off one bag. We collect recycling in a tub in the garage, and boxes/paperboard in the mud room.

I remember the days of burning combustibles in the back yard. My sister set the woods on fire once.

We've gotten hooked on these.

They're a different texture and feel. Tough and easy to handle. The last batch we bought were about a half penny more than one of the popular brands. The price of these seems to fluctuate wildly but buying so few it is hard to remember.

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For the real trash I use the unscented 30 gallon Hefty bags. I have a little bowl in the kitchen for scraps that I take to the compost daily. In the garage we have this cart. Use one bin for cardboard, one for paper and the other for aluminum and plastic. Sadly our County stopped recycling glass. We take it once a week. There would be garbage collection available, but from what I see in the neighborhood they don’t recycle. Looks like everything is just in one big trash can by the curb.

albert_135, I have been using those Costco Kirkland bags for years and love them, too!

The cheap bags do rip. I've had the bottom split just from the force of opening the bag. The ones I'm satisfied with are found at Sam's Club. These are large, black bags made of tough material with a draw ribbon in the top edge; 33 gal size and 90 bags in a box; Sam's brand name, Member's Mark. One box is a year's supply for some folks.

I buy the old style T bags like grocery stores used to give out before they banned them here. I have a wire holder under the kitchen sink that uses them. We don't store garbage in the house. When the little bag is full it gets taken out to the trash. Sometimes it's once a day, sometimes it can be several times a day. I use the bags first for shopping and later for all the uses I did before the ban including the garbage.

We buy large black trash can liners for two large trash cans we use for recycling aluminum cans. DH takes them when we have at least four to six bags full. We don't crush. All our other recyclable go in the recycling cart for curbside pickup. Our recycling is mixed into a giant wheeled trash can the city provides. No sorting required.

I have giant Smart and Final boxes of clear trash bags in several sizes xxlarge, large and kitchen, that we use to bag the shredder contents in before it goes into the cart. I also use those as dust covers for storage items that can't be boxed. I recently discovered the kitchen sized ones are perfect for blankets and extra pillows.

i bought some scented ones a few months back - by mistake. man, those things stink! I have a difficult time breathing around them.

I'll be more careful the next time i buy some.

i do remember using the paper bags to make book covers as a kid.

I'm curious Arcy, how do you contain your trash?

So how did anyone deal with trash before plastics became so ubiquitous?? Somehow they all did... just sayin'.

We use plastic "tall kitchen" bags in two trash containers inside. One is for paper, cardboard, kleenex, other non-stinkies -- it usually goes two weeks before it's full. The other is for kitchen waste. We make this bag last a full week by putting items that would smell in the freezer (in a grocery bag) until trash day. City trash truck comes once a week.

Ages ago, my parents used paper grocery bags, and wrapped particularly smelly items in newspapers, and took everything to the outside metal trash cans every evening. I use less plastic than they used paper -- honestly I don't know which method hurts the ecosystem less. :-(

I wish there was a stronger market for recyclables.

I don't know where y'all live, but around here each city has an ordinance governing recycling and garbage disposal. If you fail to comply, the refuse company will tag your stuff at the curb with instructions to rearrange as required and call for a separate pickup. You must then remove your trash from the curb until given a time-frame for pickup. A penalty charge of $45 be will added to your monthly invoice.

It doesn't take long to learn a lesson.

A coffee can catches the meal's compostible scraps and it is just a few steps out the back door to put it in the bin and toss some leaves over it.

We shop at a grocery where we can get paper bags and use those for collection of compostible paper such as most newspaper, most mail, some cardboard packaging, etc. In mid spring we spread the paper (including the paper bag) around the fruit trees before we apply mulch.

Recyclable plastic, paper, metal, and glass goes into a mixed bin then out to the recycling dumpster in the alley. By then, we don't have all that much trash, and it just goes into a plastic carrier bag our groceries are usually packed in. It takes days to completely fill such a bag and we do not take it out to the alley dumpster before it is full unless it has something in it that could get smelly.

I know my grandparents and great grandparents used to feed the food scraps to the animals... either the dogs or any livestock they were feeding. They may have had a compost for any food scraps that didn't go for an animal. Trash that could be burned was. Scrap metal that could be turned in to recycling for money was. Anything that could not be disposed of in a different way was buried.

Our parents on both sides were on farms and used food scraps for livestock etc and what was burnable was burned. Garbage was buried until dumps came along closer to their country homes.

Here we must separate all recyclables into blue bins and bags for paper/newspaper. We also are required to put compostables into a separate container. These are all taken once a week. Garbage is minimal and is picked up every two weeks. We use tall generic garbage bags and put it out once about month. Any stinkies (drip liners for meat mostly) are kept in the freezer and put out in the garbage bags.

We use small garbage bags. Calgary has a recycling/garbage program. Anything that can be recycled goes into our green bin. Anything that can be composted (all food), goes into the black bin. (In the summer I keep all the fruit and vegetable scraps for my garden composter). Anything that can't be recycled or composted goes into the last bin. The blue and green bins get picked up weekly. The black garbage one, every 2 weeks. Most times we don't have to put any of them out because there's no way to fill all three in a week.

For anyone complaining about the plastic use- living in an apartment, one can hardly bury anything. In addition, as a partially forested community. there have been recent articles about the sightings of coyotes.

I live and let live (well, except for fire ants) but I don't want coyotes or rats dropping in for a snack. Our huge complex has a compacter, but I don't see how to do without plastic.

I'm hoping research finds a strong but biodegradable plastic, as well as a substance that will destroy or degrade present plastic products such as bags and so on, in landfills.

You can purchase compostable garbage bags. Even if you don't have compost service curbside, if you put your regular garbage in them, they will disintegrate in the landfill instead of poisoning the Earth. Be sure to choose compostable, not simply biodegradable.

http://www.plasticplace.com/blog/5-surprising-secrets-of-biodegradable-plastic-bags

from the OP... bags you "throw up inside"??

Throw out. Lol. Well. We could talk about barf bags.

I guessed that Scott. Spell check. lovely! You should read some of the Doozers it changes my stuff too. Swear words... you name it

The building where my dentist is located has a new custodial service and they are using Kirkland bags.

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I use the Hefty tall bags.. we live in the country so we can burn paper, cardboard and such. The other items go into the trash bag and into the trash can to get picked up by our trash service once a week. We also have recycle bins not far from us. We have 10 acres so food scrapes get tossed in the field.. I hate having trash sitting around.. we keep all container covered.