While I hate to leave a bag of chips half-eaten as much as the next person, sometimes it just has to happen. I do have a drawer full of chip clips and regular binder clips to close up my chip bags, but I’ve never liked how they don’t provide enough of a seal to prevent snacks from going stale too soon. I hadn’t found an effective solution until I happened to mention the problem to my friend, who was a food inspector for 15 years, and she shared her now-$8 hack for storing snacks and other dry ingredients. She swears by the OXO Good Grips cinchers, simple tools that are easy to squeeze and securely seal a wide variety of bags, whether they’re holding chips or frozen vegetables.

OXO Good Grips 3-Piece Bag Cinch Set

As someone who regularly weighed bags of potato chips for work, my friend knows a thing or two about snack storage. She searched high and low for a way to easily seal plastic bags of bread, nuts, rice, dried fruits, and other pantry staples while keeping as much air out of the bags as possible. When she found the OXO Good Grips bag cinchers, she ditched twist ties and chip clips for good.

“They’re easy to use, well-made, and make a strong seal for bags,” she says. “They work much better than the average twist tie or plastic bread tab.” Because the cinchers are able to get and maintain a tight grip on bags, they help to keep foods fresh for longer. As a former food inspector, she wouldn’t recommend going as far as using them for storing bags of raw meat (never risk cross-contamination!) but “all in all, they are handy” and “add a little zip of efficiency” to her snack storage.

Don’t just take her word for it, though. These OXO bag cinchers are also loved by shoppers. One happy buyer said they’re “superior” to twist ties and another raved that they keep their seal in the freezer around bags of frozen vegetables. They’re particularly useful for bags of buns, rolls, or sliced bread from the grocery store, which come with pesky plastic clips that break off or disappear altogether. At only $8 for a set of three, they’re a small investment for longer-lasting food.

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