A painting spatula, and a brush bag

I was just touching up the living room walls, and the paint can--now half-empty--was starting to get a little crusty and rusted, the way paint cans do.  

So, as I was taking care of this paint job and also transferring the paint to better containers, it struck that this is a good time to do a little homage to two small painting hacks I've adopted during the last decade: a paint-brush bag and a paint spatula.

These hacks exhibited here.

The paint brush bag: is this something everyone else knows already?  If so, I've been pretty clueless much of my life.  Basically, it's this: if I'm painting something that will require more than one coat, instead of rinsing the paint brush out between uses, I put the bristle end of the brush in a small plastic bag and seal the open end of the bag tightly.

Then, the brush doesn't dry out between uses, but also I don't have to spend time/water rinsing the brush out.  I even have a dedicated little plastic bag that I store with my paint supplies for just this use.  The only time I rinse the brush is when the entire job is done and I'm putting everything away.  When I finish one coat, I just wrap the brush up in the bag, and unwrap it when I'm getting ready to start the next coat. So simple!

As for the spatula:  getting the last paint out of a paint can is just as frugal as getting the last bit of mayonnaise or peanut butter out of a jar.  So when I realized I had acquired more thrifted rubber spatulas than I needed in the kitchen, I dedicated one rubber spatula to the paint supplies box.  For the living room project, I used the spatula to help transfer the paint from the increasingly decrepit can to a pair of glass jars, where it's easy to see and unlikely to go bad.  

I don't put new wine in old skins, but I do put old paint in new jars.
Even when the spatula is washed off,
it still sports a few old paint splotches on the handle.