Hello... I am back and joining the fun 😁

I was reading through @livinguktaiwan's post about her tote bag collection and found some really adorable ones! Some of her tote bag stories reminded me of the ones I had, as I also love collecting them while traveling. I ended up mentioning that, somehow, I have a mountain of Starbucks tote bags. I keep giving some away, yet somehow, I still ended up with more... and more... and endless tote bags.

In some regions of Indonesia, the use of plastic bags has been phased out, especially in supermarkets, fast-food chains, and major franchises. Some regions are stricter than others, and I happen to live in one such place. There are still plastic bags, but mostly in traditional wet markets or small corner stores.

When you visit a convenience store in some region, they will not provide plastic bag, instead they will give you two options;

1. Carrying the items without any bags
2. Buying either their paperbag or totebag which is often a couple extra cents.

Plastic bags is also phased out in delivery system. Many big chains and franchises are charging extra for packaging that basically mean tote bags. You can not really opt-out of this because it's all included in the delivery. Since these kind of rules are strictly enforced, I have never seen a single plastic or paper bag from these places. Although, they still use paper bags only when you buy directly from the store.

As someone who used to order a couple of Starbucks every day, I accumulated two tote bags daily, excluding if I was also ordering from places like McDonald's or the Japanese fast-food chains. When you do the math, you can simply imagine that I was practically living among a mountain of tote bags before I knew it.

I still remember that I used a massive storage bin just filled with tote bags. Then, at some point, attempting to get rid of them, I used them as trash bags and gave them away, but I still ended up with more.

FYI, the totebags that you see above are just a fraction of what I currently have at home. These days we use the totebags when we give something to the neighbors. We also offer anyone these totebags just because it has Starbucks logo on them and people are more than happy to have them. But not only Starbucks, I also have one from Mcdonald and practically any fast food chain or coffee you can think of.

Other than those tote bags, I also love picking up one whenever I travel. As of lately, I have this tote bag I got from Thailand for 50-70 bath. I think that was a steal since it was just sold at a random local market over there at a fixed price. I don't think I could get it any lower.

These other two are the totebags I got from @fems.official a little while back. I am honestly obsessed with tote bags that can carry many things. I have a couple more high-end totebags that help me carry water bottles and necessities. Finding a tote bag that can fit many things is always nice.

I don't think I am alone in this; I also think these tote bags are not the answer to environmental problems. You see, just like in this article, Are Tote Bags Really Good for the Environment? they may be green in principle, but wait until someone like me ends up with a mountain of tote bags.