Smug Household Tip: Wine Bottle Ziploc Drying Poles

Smug Scout is not a natural housekeeper and has virtually nothing to share on Smug topics like green cleaning or time and space wasting European kitchen gadgetry. She will not apologize for any of that. She is not a Smug jack of all trades. However, because she has a small kitchen with what she is sure is an illegally small amount of counter space, she has been forced to improvise to meet certain needs. One of her most Smug needs is reusing Ziploc bags until the plastic becomes cloudy and wrinkled, perhaps toxic. Since she brings her lunch to work every day, and her lunch often features local organic heirloom cherry tomatoes, she must wash at least one Ziploc bag per day. But a dilemma presented itself: how could she dry them to prevent mold from befouling the interior? The solution arrived in the form of wine bottles she lazily left on the counter and did not immediately recycle. Smug Scout ingeniously turned the bags upside down and put them on top of the wine bottles; they dried in record time. Here are the Smug benefits:

  1. You will not need to buy Ziploc bags more often than once every ten years. In fact, Smug Scout does not even remember how many years ago she bought that box of Ziploc bags. She also still has every one she ever got from a friend, though her friends may no longer recognize them in their current form. She will not ask them to try.
  2. You will need to continue to buy expensive and limited production local wine, so that you will have sufficiently Smug wine bottle Ziploc drying poles. You do not want a wine bottle Ziploc drying pole made from cheap swill of suspect provenance, like any house label of a certain eco-hostile supermarket chain (all that plastic!) known for its $2 wine, which Smug Scout considers unfit for human consumption.

Tip: do not let any flagrant wastrels make fun of your antique Ziploc collection. If that happens, use the diversionary tactic in this sample dialogue to develop a response:

  • Flagrant wastrel: Those bags are disgusting! What are you, some relic from the Depression?
  • Smug Scout: Maybe so. What is the last bottle of wine you bought?
  • Flagrant wastrel: I got a great deal on a French red from Trader Joe’s. It only cost $4.99.
  • Smug Scout: I see. You have vulgar taste and clearly no gag reflex. I would only drink that plonk through an IV line.
  • Flagrant wastrel: You’ve just insulted me!
  • Smug Scout: True, but I hope I insulted Trader Joe’s more.

Just ask Smug Scout if you need a bottle or two for your Smug wine bottle Ziploc drying poles. She will not share her Ziplocs, however. You will have to age those on your own.

Final warning: be proud of your Smug wine bottle Ziploc drying pole. Try not to let Smug friends bamboozle you into squandering $20 on a reclaimed wood plastic bag dryer from Vermont, even though this is clearly a very Smug object. Smug Scout in fact just found herself out-Smugged by a very Smug friend in Portsmouth who first took pictures of her reclaimed wood plastic bag dryer, pictures that featured Smug iconography such as MacBooks, hand varnished reclaimed wood tables, and an “earth-sensitive” pinot noir (a bottle that still had wine in it, pointedly not to be used as a wine bottle Ziploc drying pole), only to brag that she could not take a picture of this contraption “in use” because she simply “doesn’t use much plastic.” Wow! Out-Smugged on two counts! Now Smug Scout knows when she is down for the count, but she would like to point out that it is much more sensible to spend that $20 on a bottle of wine than an object you then become too Smug to use.

6 thoughts on “Smug Household Tip: Wine Bottle Ziploc Drying Poles

  1. I do it too. I hang mine from the pant hangers with clips. My mom was the bread bag saver of all times. Our lunches consisted of fruit, a sandwich wrapped in wax paper, and a cookie, all stuffed into a reused bread bag. It was mandatory that we bring our bag home…. I think she must have gotten them from the neighbors, because my mom always baked her own bread….hmmmmm

    • Hi Mary! Smug Scout just loves the idea of using pants hangers with clips! How clever. It sounds like you are a fine tribute to your mother. Smug Scout herself hopes that her grandmother, who was a teenager during the Depression, would be proud of her.

      • I came across an equally fantastic use for pants hangers —–use them to clip your recipe open (whether a book or a mag, or whatever) and hang them from the upper cabinet pull. I mean….how smug is that!!

        • That is highly Smug and resourceful. Smug Scout wonders how many other Smug uses of hangers may exist. Please continue to craft other uses and share them. You sound rather like a Smug scout.

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