Sweating profusely over his quartz kitchen island, a local resident deployed complex geometric folding principles Tuesday in an effort to compress a massive pile of grocery bags into one master canvas sack.
EVANSTON, Ill. — Sweating profusely over his quartz kitchen island, local 34-year-old David Herrick reportedly deployed advanced principles of Japanese paper-folding Tuesday in an effort to compress a massive pile of reusable grocery bags into one identical canvas tote. Witnesses confirm the 45-minute operation involved precise geometric creases, heavy physical compression, and repeated muttering about load-bearing structural integrity.
The ordeal began shortly after Herrick unpacked a week's worth of groceries, leaving him confronted with a disorganized mound of canvas, stiff woven plastic, and flimsy nylon sacks from a 2019 dental conference. Rather than shoving the loose mass into the hall closet as he had done for the past three years, Herrick systematically flattened each individual bag. He was observed aligning the rigid plastic bottom inserts and painstakingly tucking the handles inward to prevent the straps from forming an inescapable knot. Sources indicate he then executed a complex sequence of valley folds, mountain creases, and reverse tucks to slide the items into the designated primary bag.
By the time he reached the 28th bag, the host receptacle had begun to bulge dramatically, stretching the canvas seams and taking on the approximate weight and density of a concrete masonry unit. Unwilling to abandon the consolidation project or throw away a single 99-cent bag, Herrick reportedly climbed onto a kitchen chair to place his entire upper body weight onto the pile. This maneuver allowed him to force a rigid, zipper-sealed insulated cooler bag into a rapidly vanishing two-inch gap along the canvas wall.
The structural tension inside that primary tote is currently storing enough kinetic energy to shatter a car window if the stitching fails.
Following the successful containment of the entire collection, Herrick carefully wedged the 40-pound canvas cube into the sliver of space between the refrigerator and the wall. The victory was reportedly short-lived, however, as he immediately turned around to discover a crumpled, wine-stained Trader Joe's tote sitting on the dining room table, prompting him to sigh heavily, retrieve the master bag, and begin unpacking the entire hyper-dense structure to start over.