Something I Obsess About For No Apparent Reason.

My lovely other-half will surely tell you that I have a pointless obsession with folding plastic bags in a certain way. To the uninitiated, this may seem like madness, however there is method to this madness and history, to boot.

When I used to work at the Probation Service, many moons ago, I would often (and in fact, usually) buy my lunch from the Sainsbury's across the road. I was hungry, so my lunch often looked like this:

Can of soup/curry/chilli etc.

Six-pack of rolls.

Large bag of crisps (the big bags of kettle chips, and the like)

Tub of houmous, in which to dip said chips.

Chocolatey goodness of some variety.

This, of course, meant that I would need at least one plastic bag in which to carry my lunch back to the office. As you may expect, I lacked the foresight to bring a bag to the supermarket with me, so I quickly accumulated a large collection of bags, stuffed in my bottom drawer.

It was when I was trying to stuff another empty bag into said drawer when I decided that perhaps a different strategy was warranted, and hence the bag folding technique was born. For those who want to know, it involves flattening the bag to it's production shape (that is, how you see them in the shop), folding into thirds horizontally, in half vertically, and then in thirds horizontally again. The resultant rectangle can then be tied into a small knot, which takes about 15-20% of the space of a bag simply stuffed into the drawer. Success!

Having now quintupled the capacity of my drawer, this then became a daily ritual, and is now firmly engrained into my brain as the right way to do.

So there. Next time you think I'm weird, well, I'm not. And fuck you. But mostly the first one.