How about neither? I spent part of the Easter holiday resurrecting a pair of jeans that never fit me right by turning them into a cloth shopping bag with big handles. Upon the astute advice of one Jan Andrea, I disassembled one of the many Kroger paper bags around the place and used it as a pattern—the right size rectangle. I disassembled the jeans and pieced them together for a piece large enough, plus seam allowances. The site gives excellent sewing instructions. If you decide to go patchwork like I did, I would recommend removing pockets and other thickness boosters where seams fall first, unless you have a large supply of extra strong needles. I didn’t remove the pockets, and several needles gave their lives in the undertaking, but it was a learning experience. I do all the grocery shopping, like my father before me—we’re a weird family that way—and I have a sentimental attachment to the paper grocery bag. When I used to go with my dad (to give my mother some peace and to educate me in the ways of the grocery store) groceries cost roughly $5/bag. I went grocery shopping this morning, for substantially more. Dad was a label reader back in the fifties. He would’ve loved all the additional info. now. How did the new bag work, you ask? I forgot it, of course.
A number of our grocery store chains here in New Zealand are selling cloth bags which we were delighted to purchase instead of using the plastic things they always load the shopping into.
I think they copied the idea from the public libraries which began selling Book Bags a year or two before that – very useful when going to the library for one or two books and going home with a dozen (happens all the time!)