CITO Bag Tutorial by Blue Crow Expedition

A great tutorial by guest blogger Jason Michels aka Blue Crow Expedition

I live near Milwaukee, Wisconsin and I do most of my geocaching there.  It's a medium-sized city with a lot of green spaces.  This is great for geocaching because you can drive right up to the edge of great geocaching locations without leaving town.  There are places where you can walk ten miles of paved trails, picking up caches along the way, and then catch an Uber back to your parking spot.

Having green spaces mixed in with urban areas also means that they get a lot of traffic and they accumulate a certain amount of litter, so there are plenty of opportunities for CITO.  Recently I have been folding up plastic grocery bags to carry in my geocaching kit. That way I always have a few with me and they don't take up much space.

This is how I do it, in case you would like to try it too.

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Step 1: Get a plastic grocery bag.

Step 2: Spread it out flat.

Step 3: Fold in the sides.

Step 4: When I fold in the sides in Step 3, I make the folded bag about four and a half inches across. For this particular bag I am not quite folding it into thirds. I am not saying you should get out a ruler, but you'll make it easier on yourself later if you think about the width at this point. You might need to adjust depending on the shape of the bag.

Step 5: Fold in the tabs.

Step 6: Fold the bag in half again so you have a flat strip a little more than two inches wide.

Step 7: Starting from the bottom of the bag, fold over one corner to make a triangle.

Step 8: Fold up the triangle. Squeeze out the air as you go.

Step 9: Keep going until you get close to the end of the bag.

Step 10: Fold over the short end to make another stubby little triangle.

Step 11: If everything comes out even, you should have a flap where you can tuck the smaller triangle into the bigger triangle. If it doesn't come out even, try unfolding the bigger triangle part way and using more of the bag for the smaller triangle.

Step 12: Tidy everything up. You're ready to go out and declutter the world.

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I saw this tutorial on the Geocaching for Everyone FB page and invited Jason to share it here. I really like how compact the bags are - not only handy for CITO'ing but also for emergencies.

Compact and storable in an emergency kit. 

For medical emergencies on the trails use them to carry away the bloody bandages and gauze.

Stored neatly folded you avoid the risk of puncturing it while stowed in your bag.

This would also be handy to protect your hand if you have to move something gross.

Dead squirrel laying on the cache, anyone? Reaching into a particularly moldy log? Rain dripping down onto your expensive smart phone? Soggy socks after falling into the creek? 

Add a small personalized CITO sticker to it and leave them as swag in caches for others to find.

~scrapcat