Here’s how to do it! Great tips from This Is Insider and Bustle

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You’ve been closing Ziploc bags wrong your whole life – Lauren Piro, Delish – This Is Insider

“The INSIDER Summary

Everyone tries to squeeze the air out of a Ziploc bag.
One hack is to suck the air out with your mouth.
You can also place a straw into the bag’s opening to suck the air out.

No matter what you call them — plastic baggies, sandwich bags, Ziplocs (the widely accepted brand-name moniker, à la Kleenex) — everyone’s fought with a zip-top storage bag as you’ve desperately tried to squeeze the air out of it.

So when we spotted this simple trick to getting a plastic bag as close to vacuum-sealed as humanly possible (read: sans extra kitchen gadget), we were intrigued. Slate’s L.V. Anderson demonstrates a trick she learned from her mom— instead of trying to squeeze out excess air with your hands, leave a small opening in the middle of the seal and then suck the extra air out with your mouth. It’s definitely one of those “mom knows best” tricks that you probably can’t believe you haven’t been doing this whole time.

Sharon Franke, director of the Kitchen Appliances Lab (which often tests food storage products and techniques) in the Good Housekeeping Institute agrees that this is a handy trick to know as you pack lunch. She’s also heard that sometimes people place a straw into the bag’s opening to suck the air out — that way, your mouth doesn’t actually have to touch the plastic. “But regardless of what you do, you don’t create a tight vacuum,” she says. “Some air will always get back in before you seal up the bag.”

Still, for everyday food storage needs, “close” sounds like good enough for us mere humans.

Read the original article on Delish.”

You’ve Been Closing Ziploc Bags Wrong This Whole Time

By Kat George – For the original article and to watch the video – click the link

“Today in shocking news you didn’t see coming — you’ve been closing Ziploc bags wrong this whole time. I basically just walk around performing my daily routines knowing that I’m probably doing everything horribly, frightfully wrong. And until the right way to do it is plastered across the Internet, I will just have to come to peace with my near constant wrongness. But I digress — today’s topic up for discussion is Ziploc-ing your food, or whatever else it is you Ziploc. Closing a Ziploc bag the right way is a life hack that will not only change your life, it will have you shaking your fist at the sky and shouting, “But it’s so simple! Why didn’t I think of that?!”

As anyone who has ever closed a Ziploc bag already knows, the hardest part is getting all the air out — that dastardly air. That air that makes your bag take up too much room in your fridge. That air that compromises the freshness of your food. Getting it out while simultaneously zipping closed a sandwich bag is a pain that, for many of us, is all too real and relatable. But what if I told you there was a simple, easy way to get rid of it? Get ready for the life hack to end all life hacks, as demonstrated by Slate:

1. This is how you probably use a Ziploc bag

Most people put their food in their Ziploc, try to clumsily press the air out with their hands, and seal it. Come on, don’t pretend like you haven’t tried to wrestle and squeeze the air out of a Ziploc bag and then hastily seal it before more air can get in. The problem with this approach is that there’s always still some air left inside.

2. But wait, there’s a better way!

All you have to do is throw your food in the bag, and seal it MOST of the way, leaving a tiny gap. You don’t even need to press the air out, just leave it as is…

3. It’s time to get intimate with your Ziploc bag

The next step is to put your mouth over the little gap you’ve left in the top of the bag, and getting intimate with it, suck until you’ve sucked all the air out of the bag. Voila! You have essentially vacuum-sealed your food, eliminating extra space caused by the air in your Ziploc bag. I told you it was a simple fix!”