SPACE BAGS!!!!

Have you seen these things, these – wait. Perhaps you've never found yourself held in late-night thrall by the infomercial?

And before we get started, any time you are faced with the word “infomercial”, by the way, duck for cover. This also holds true for “docudrama” and, in my experience, “sitcom”.

I have enjoyed, however, a number of “rockumentaries”.

I haven’t quite worked that out yet, but I’m okay with my possible hypocrisy.

But this is not about my love of Spinal Tap or backstage interviews of, say, 60's era Rolling Stones. This is about the Space Bags.

Do you have piles of fluffy blankets littering your hallways? Are excess pillows getting in the way of your good times?

Or perhaps you just think it would be cool to collapse your winter clothes into a bouillon-sized cube for airtight storage until seasonably necessary again?

Well for heaven’s sake, honey, don’t put your trust in those lousy Space Bags.

You’ve seen these, right?

They seemed like a good idea: plastic bags with one-way valves and zip-lock-style zippers on one end. According to the grinning man on the TV, you just put the stuff you want to store in the bag, arrange the articles nice and flat, zip it up, fit your vacuum nozzle to the one-way valve and huwwwwwwwwwwwwwwttt! All the air is sucked out! Pop a cover on the valve and voila! Flat, odor-free, waterproof storage!

Yep, it’s a good idea.

Too bad only one of the seven bags (only $19.95!) has held its seal.

Too bad that no matter how you pack the “hanging” bag for the winter coats the momentarily-vacuum-sealed bag does not hang flat but instead hangs in lumpen, cost-and-space-inefficient misery.

My purchase of these bags was the transactional equivalent of emptying the contents of my wallet directly into the garbage.

I can’t believe that guy on the TV lied to me.