Eureka

Yeah, I likely spelled the title wrong, you'll all live I am sure.
You know how many pop tabs I go through? Well it takes over 80 for a wallet and about 400 for a purse. Right, so a lot. Cleaning them before use has been a nightmare. However I discovered that a mesh bag originally intended for washing delicates (lingerie) works great, I can put almost an ice cream pails worth in at a time and run it through the washing machine with a splash of bleach. Yay!

Also on the topic of cleaning the pop tabs, several people collect them for me, and they rock. Sometimes I wonder about them though. In the last batch there were 5 pieces of uncooked maccaroni, a few barley pearls, and some fresh barley heads complete with chaff, a pink plastic bead, a maple leaf lapel pin in really bad condition, a very worn penny, a dime, and a couple green plastic pellets, and the usual bits of lint. Do they look at what else is in their pockets? Or just "I know I have a couple tabs for Cindy in this pocket" and dump them out without looking? Me I always look when emptying my pockets, you never know what might pop outta there, esp in jackets. My kids think I am their storage box when we leave the house even though they usually have pockets too.