I bought my first reusable shopping a bag a few years ago. I felt so... virtuous... leaving Trader Joe's with my groceries encased in the store's surfboard-print bags, knowing I'd saved helped to save the rain forest and kept a few more of those pesky plastic bags  out of the landfill.

Since then, my kitchen has filled up with those shopping bags -- blue Hawaiian print ones, red ones with bull's eye symbols, padded ones to keep my frozen goods frozen. The problem is -- they spend too much time in my kitchen. Sure, I know the drill... put the bags back in the trunk as you empty them out, so you'll never be caught empty-handed.

But I usually unload groceries in between school pickups, with a preschooler in tow, and somehow putting the bags back in the car becomes a low priority.

And with the variety of (floral! paisley! leaf patterned!) reusable bags for next to checkstands at every supermarket, big box store, heck -- even Costco, where no one even expects to get a bag -- it's tempting to load up on new ones.

Really, I have to wonder whether in a few years, the landfills will be clogged up with brightly colored "reuseable" shopping bags, that we all somehow forgot to take with us.