I have an abundance of cloth tote bags (some might say, a hoard?) It bothers me enough that I wrote a guest post about alternative uses for cloth shopping bags at Nap Time is My Time (you can read it here). When I was asked to review a reuseable tote for reuseit.com, I was unsure.

But when I went to the website and saw their bags, I was convinced it was worth a try.  I chose the Blue Q large stand-up shopping tote because it had some fun, contemporary designs and boasted the ability to hold 40+ pounds of merchandise.

Here’s what it looked like out of the package:

Cute, right?

The tote bags are woven from 95% post-consumer material.  A removable tag on the handle explains the process:

1.  Used grain sacks are collected, cleaned, ground and…
2. melted into rolls of recycled plastic…
3. woven into durable blog fabric…
4. printed with our super-fantastic graphics…
5. cut & sewn into bags of all shapes and sizes…
6. and off to work they go.

 1 % of the sales of Blue Q reusable tote bags goes to support the conservation work of the Nature Conservancy.

So of course, as soon as I could I needed to test out that 40+ pound boast.

Here’s Boo holding the tote bag with 40 pounds of goods inside.

I also needed to see quantity-wise how much I could stuff in it.  In the photo above, the Blue Q bag was stuffed with a watermelon, two jar candles, a set of 5 pound each dumbbells, a set of 5 pound each ankle weights, a bottle of bleach and a large jar of peanut butter.

I also stuffed it with cloth shopping bags.

It held 14 cloth shopping bags!!

The Blue Q large stand-up shopping tote retails for $11.95 and you can find it on reuseit.com

I give this tote bag 5 out of 5 gallons of milk!!  It’s durable, wipes clean, and it holds a ridiculous amount of stuff!!

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.