I rinse out and reuse my bin bags. I can't be the only one

Times

12-07-2025

T wenty years ago I spent £180 on a kitchen bin. Then, quite soon after but unrelated, we had three children. The kitchen bin is still with us and you would hope so too because — I'm not sure if I've mentioned this — it cost £180. I wasn't to know it at the time but the bin was to become the high watermark of our extravagant double-income-no-kids lives. Imelda Marcos had a last pair of Louboutins. Caligula had a last roast crocodile. We have that bin. Every time I use it I have a flash of nostalgia for that life before nappies, buggies, uniforms and driving lessons. Those, after all, were the days — the late nights and late mornings, the relaxed conversations, the avocado on toast, the enormous bin budget.
The problem is that the £180 bin requires very particular bin bags and those very particular bin bags are expensive, which is probably where I should have begun this cautionary tale. On bin day last week I had an argument with Harriet. She began it by saying, 'I've put a chicken carcass in the bin, so make sure you chuck it out.' I said, 'But I just washed the bin bag.' She said, 'It's hot, though, so it will smell.' I offered to wash it again with washing-up liquid and everything but she crossed her elbows and said no.
Very quickly the argument became heated and then it spiralled across wider budgetary red lines — the cost of my beers, the cost of her massage treatments, the lottery ticket I once bought, that time she parked in the multistorey rather than on the street a mile away but free. Then, for a moment, the guns fell silent. She made an angry cup of (expensive) coffee. I made a defensive cup of (cheap) tea. Then, caffeinated, she took a deep breath and said, 'Why are you washing bin bags anyway?' and started laughing.
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Irritatingly, I started laughing too because it was a good question. Why was I washing bin bags anyway? I think this curious behaviour took root in the winter, probably at about the same time we got a telephone-number electricity bill. For a long time before that I'd been tipping kitchen waste from the fancy 45p kitchen bag into a less fancy 15p black bag. I'd been relatively covert about it and each successful decanting felt like a heist — if I could get three goes out of one bag I'd have saved… 90p. One bag a week instead of three is, over time, millions.
Then, after no one finished their spaghetti bolognese, Harriet noticed what I was up to. She said she didn't think it was very nice using a kitchen bin bag twice let alone three times. I suggested any unpleasant detritus could go straight outside in the black bag. If we only used the kitchen bin for pleasant detritus then it was fine. She suggested, quite forcefully, that this wouldn't be happening. I started washing bin bags.
At first I did it in the dead of night. Then I became more brazen — I'd slip out to water the garden and take the bin bag with me. There were some mutterings from my beloved. She knew what I was up to but decided, I suspect, to let me get on with it. Then came chicken-carcass-gate, the crossed elbows and the laughter.
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Where do we go from here, you'll be wondering. For the sake of holy matrimony we could replace the £180 bin and its expensive taste in bags for a humbler cousin, but that would require upfront capital investment. We could invite a financial adviser to review our incomings and outgoings to identify better ways to make ends meet, but they'll only make us shop at Aldi. We could even move to a cheaper home in a cheaper neck of the woods and use as many fancy bin bags as we liked.
We won't do any of those things. The definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. The definition of household finance is doing the same thing over and over and expecting the kids to move out at some point.
'We need to have an abundance mentality,' Harriet says after listening to a podcast. Miserliness leads to misery. Generosity leads to a sense of wealth. A sense of wealth leads to… wealth? Something like that.
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Fine then. I did a bit of stretching, I jogged on the spot and I channelled my inner Imelda. Then I grabbed the perfectly reusable bin bag with its only slightly turning chicken carcass and I threw it straight out. And, only for a brief moment, I felt like a millionaire.