The Laundry Basket Hack Saving TikTok Time And Effort At The Grocery Store

The first modern grocery store in the United States opened in 1916 in Memphis, Tennessee, according to Time. Piggly Wiggly, which today boasts hundreds of locations, per its website, revolutionized grocery shopping, introducing "shopping baskets, price-marked items, employees in uniform, and the supermarket franchise model."

As grocery stores and supermarkets grew, so did the way Americans shopped. Baskets were the go-to before 1939, when Sylvan Goldman invented the shopping cart, per Shopify. Shopping carts weren't met with warm reception initially, but with the magic of advertising and marketing, it took off. Next came plastic grocery bags. They were invented and patented in 1965, according to The Atlantic. By 1985, 75% of grocery stores had plastic bags. 

Today, many grocery stores are providing fewer plastic bags. Whole Foods claims to be the first U.S. grocery store to ban single-use plastic bags, per its website. Many retailers, such as Kroger, Target, and Walmart, have joined the Beyond the Bag Initiative, an effort to find sustainable alternatives to single-use plastic bags (via Beyond the Bag).

As environmental concerns are leading more consumers and retailers to limit plastic bag usage, one TikTok user offers a hack that can help reduce time and effort at the grocery store. 

In the TikTok video, @1980sgamer shares a hack that can help shave downtime spent at the grocery store with the help of laundry baskets. Yes, you read that right — you need two laundry baskets placed in the trunk of your car. As unusual as it sounds, the user claims it will save you a "ton of time."

Here's how it works: On your next grocery trip, shop per usual. Place your items in your shopping cart. Then, load the items onto the conveyor belt at the checkout lane. But, the TikTok user advises that, instead of wasting time bagging up the groceries, just load the groceries back into the shopping cart.

Walk the shopping cart back to the car, where the laundry baskets await in the back of the vehicle. Place your groceries into the baskets and upon arriving back home, simply unload the baskets out of the trunk, saving the multiple trips back and forth between your car and home.

@1980sgamer's video has certainly gotten the attention of TikTok users. Since it was posted in November 2021, it has racked up a whopping 22 million views and 4.4 million likes. While many praised this hack to be innovative, others in the comments mentioned they have been able to streamline their grocery runs in other ways. "This is so smart! I usually just take their empty cardboard boxes they have laying around and fill it up," user Blackbean_cms commented.

Costco shoppers are probably familiar with leaving grocery shopping bagless. As Costco does not offer plastic grocery bags, per its website, customers have resorted to other methods of carrying out their groceries. On the Costco subreddit, one shopper offers the tip of grabbing empty produce boxes in the store and using them to transport groceries. Of course, in Costco, this is a fairly common practice as even the employees at the check-out line will often provide these boxes to help customers consolidate their items before departing.

In addition to retailers such as Costco and Whole Foods limiting the usage of plastic bags, states and cities across the United States have increasingly banned plastic bags within the past couple of decades. States such as California, Maine, New York, Oregon, and Vermont have banned single-use plastic bags, according to the National Conference of States Legislatures. Additionally, some cities, including New York City and Portland, have even adopted similar measures, such as plastic bag fees, in order to lessen their prevalence.