turps

Depending on exactly how many carrier bags you have, it may well be worth sorting out the newest, strongest ones to keep and taking the rest to shove in the supermarket's recycling bin. Plastic bags degrade after a while, and disintegrate into shards. I keep a 'bag sausage', a tube of material with elasticated ends, which holds all the 'active' carrier bags, though I actually have some proper fabric ones now which are definitely going to last.

I pulled at least a thousand carrier bags out of one of the cupboards at FIL's house when we were helping him get ready to move to Oz. They mostly disintegrated.

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Your family as a whole is really going through tough times. I'm so sorry.