IKEA Plastic Bag

Oh, IKEA!

Please do not smite me for not buying any of your Swedish-designed furnishings during my last visit by dropping one of your yellow and blue football field-sized stores on top of me!

I’m sorry that I didn’t purchase any of your cheap furnishings with names that sound like they were created using random Scrabble letters puked out by a five-year-old who didn’t know better. But believe me I wanted to walk out with enough furniture to put my modest two-bedroom apartment through an extreme makeover, but it would be difficult to ship all of it from California to this rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, unless you IKEA, made a cheap boat that could be put together with single sheet of simple instructions.

To appease you IKEA, I did not leave totally empty-handed. I purchased one of your IKEA plastic shopping bag for five cents at the checkout counter. Sure, other stores don’t charge me for plastic bags, but I was more than happy to buy one from you so that I don’t get a VIREN or a LILLHOLMEN reamed up any of my orifices by you.

Actually, my friend purchased it and I have yet to pay her back for it. To make up my debt to her, I plan to stand at the corner and flash a little skin at those who pass by and hopefully someone will throw a nickel my way to make me cover myself up. I actually wanted your big blue 59-cent reusable IKEA bag, but I would have to go down on too many people to make that kind of money.

Although, I can reuse your five-cent IKEA shopping bag if I wanted to. I can use it as a trash bag, water bucket, interrogation tool, for a kindergarden sack race, the worst deep sea diver’s helmet EVER, or storage for all the other plastic shopping bags I have. I can also use it for making cheesy rain sound effects in the background whenever I sing the Guns N’ Roses song “November Rain” at karaoke or for making really good plastic shopping bag crumpling sound effects whenever someone is bagging my groceries at the grocery store.

While the bag’s transparency makes it hard to hide from others unwrapped gifts, chopped up body parts, or a collection of Lance Bass clippings from Teen Beat and Tiger Beat magazines, its size is significantly larger than the plastic shopping bags from most grocery stores.

These two attributes make your IKEA Plastic Bag the ideal bag for carrying a baby or toddler…if the bag didn’t say “Esta bolsa no es un juguete, puedo causar sofocacion, mantenga bolsa plastica fuera del alcance de los ninos o bebes.” The transparency of the bag would’ve made it easy to see what a kid is up to, while its size would’ve been able to hold not only a child, but also a few toys, some snacks, and a snorkel to help them breathe.

Well IKEA, hopefully the purchase of your five-cent plastic bag won’t cause you to punish me for not purchasing any of your inexpensive furniture, because I don’t think I could handle the punishment of eating a billion of your delicious Swedish meatballs in a row.

(Editor’s Note: IKEA in the US is now charging five cents per plastic bag to discourage shoppers from using them, which in turn will slightly help reduce the waste caused by plastic bags every year. You can read more about it here.)

Item: IKEA Plastic Bag
Price: 5 cents
Purchased at: IKEA
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros: Big plastic bag. Big IKEA logo on both sides. Comes with built-in handles. Would make a good kiddie transport, if not for the warnings on the bag. Inexpensive Swedish-designed furnishings.
Cons: Most expensive plastic shopping bag ever. Being punished by IKEA for leaving a store empty-handed. Bad for the environment. Bag’s transparency makes it hard to hide your clippings of Lance Bass. Having clippings of Chris Kirkpatrick. The number of people I’d have to go down on to make 59 cents.

13 thoughts to “IKEA Plastic Bag”

  1. Marvo, I don’t usually have much critical to say, but…a plastic bag? Is this really something that deserves a TIB review? At any rate, although the size sounds nice, the transparent thing would dissuade me from spending a nickel on it. I need a bag that can conceal body parts when I’m carrying them out to the dumpster.

  2. Not Me, I display the body parts proudly on the way to the dumpster. It helps keep the Freaks with the religious propaganda away from my door.

  3. Not the most expensive plastic shopping bag ever — I myself bought a slightly sturdier version of the same thing in England from Tesco, a grocery store chain, for the equivalent of 20 cents. Practically everyone in Britain has one and uses them for everything from grocery toting to long-distance travel. And probably hauling about body parts (these, you see, are opaque and thus ideal). So you see, it’s a European thing, and thus classy.

  4. if you look on the side of target bags there is a long list of things you can do with your target bag when you get home, like pick up dog poop.

  5. here in europe they charge you for the plastic bag, but you can take as many cardboard boxes as you want for free 😉

  6. My wife and I lost our Ikea gift card given to us by her aunt after only spending $25 of $100. Think of how many bags that could have bought. No use now anyway, there are no Ikeas in Colorado.

  7. I prefer to use my Giant Eagle or Kroger or Walmart bag for body parts – they are semi opaque (semi translucent?), but how I keep the people away is splitting them up into multiple bags, leaving a hand stick out of one, and then run to the dumpster with them screaming “They all weigh the same! They all weigh the same!”

  8. If IKEA was a man, I’d marry him. That has nothing to do with a bag. Except, I’d be his old bag. Although technically I’m not old. Or a bag.

  9. Marvo, let me warn you….collecting plastic bags starts off innocently enough. But one day you’re facing an entire cabinet FILLED to the brim with shopping bags of every variety and shape. Then you find yourself eyeing the little retangle bags bread comes in, thinking “Yeah, I can store something in that”…..but you CAN’T.

    It’s an addiction. Discard the bag now or face, at the least, an imminent intervention – or at the most, THE LOSS OF YOUR SOUL!

  10. I collect plastic bags.

    I’m especially proud of my vintage 1965 Piggly Wiggly. It’s in excellent condition. If I had a mantel, I would frame it and hang the masterpiece above it.

  11. I’ve been to the Ikea near here three times…only to end up eating there and not buy a damn thing. Turns out this is pretty normal from what others say. Weird.

  12. Chuck – It was an impulsive buy. If I was at a grocery store, it would’ve been a pack of gum or the National Enquirer, but it was IKEA, so all I could really get near the checkout was the bag.

    bikerbabeee – A better way to keep the freaks with the religious propaganda away from your door…electric fence.

    Stelmarta – Not all European things are classy. Example? The Spice Girls.

    stephanie – That’s such a big bag for dog poop…unless your dog is Clifford the Big Red Dog, then it’s way too small.

    FatYoli – Wow. Homeless people must be living large in the cardboard box mansions. 🙂

    Mad Cow – At least you can drive to another state to go to an IKEA. I have to fly across the ocean. Also, I hope I find your lost IKEA card, so that I may return it to you with a balance of 5 cents.

    Clevegal42 – Walmart bags are a good size too. I guess they have to be in order to fit all the crap I didn’t intend to buy.

    Erika – I wish an IKEA was my house.

    Buffy – I’ll just give it to the crazy homeless guy on my street. He’ll probably use it as a hat or a new best friend.

    Natalia – I have a 2007 IKEA plastic bag in used condition. Wanna trade?

    ultradave – I always seem to end up at IKEA whenever I visit my friends on the West Coast and I usually buy something. Maybe because I don’t have easy access to one, so I feel the need to buy something. Also, with all the walking I do during each visit, I think that time spent should equal to some purchased merchandise.

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