SWANSEA – Talk about Yankee ingenuity.

Jean Johnson was plum out of luck after 500 disposable capes, which one of her hair stylists had ordered for her business, finally came in.

“They were all cut in half. They were no good,” Johnson said, describing the size and dimension of each cape, which is placed over the front of a customer to protect clothes from falling hair.

Johnson since 1998 has owned and operated Crew Cuts, a unisex hair salon on Route 6 inside the Swansea shopping plaza in which one also finds Target and McDonald’s.

Her employee, Linda Nogeiro, had placed the Amazon order for the disposable capes well in advance of the May 25 reopening in the state of hair salons and barber shops.

“It took two months for them to be delivered,” said Nogeiro, who assumes that supply couldn’t keep up with demand.

Hair salons and other “non-essential” businesses had been closed since March 24, when an executive order issued by Gov. Charlie Baker went into effect as a means of controlling the spread of COVID-19.

One of the Phase 2 conditions of reopening hair salons, Johnson said, is that each hair-cutting cape can only be used once before it either is laundered or thrown out.

For a week or so following her reopening, Johnson’s staff used the traditional cloth capes, which she says under normal circumstances would be tossed into the clothes hamper after being used two or three times.

But she and her husband Bill, who live in Dighton, quickly came to realize the expense and time required to buy extra cloth capes then have to wash and tumble dry more than 300 of them per week at the laundromat of their choice, which in their case happens to be in Taunton.

“He said, ‘We can’t do this. It’s crazy,’” Jean Johnson said. “So we came up with plan B.”

Johnson knew she had to act fast in finding a cost-effective alternative to the cloth model.

That alternative turned out to be large Hefty brand garbage bags.

Unlike the undersized and unusable, disposable hair-cutting capes that were shipped from Texas and Arizona, Johnson says each black garbage bag is big enough to accommodate two customers.

Besides cutting them in half after taking them out of the box, which she’s able to buy next door at Target, she’s also become adept at using scissors to cut a semi-circular neck line.

And most importantly, Johnson said, her garbage-bag capes can withstand multiple visits to the laundromat.

She says each is used once and then put into a large, plastic tote container. Once it’s full, her husband brings it to the laundromat where he launders the bags in washing machines using a combination of bleach and detergent.

“They really are durable,” Jean said.

Her husband says he’s been making as many as five runs a week to the Taunton laundromat.

Johnson says she didn’t think she was breaking a rule by washing and reusing the garbage-bag capes, but she eventually checked with the town’s board of health.

“They said it was fine,” she said.

The bags are tough, but they can’t withstand a dryer’s heat cycle.

That’s why the Johnsons hang them out to dry in their backyard using six clothes lines, each of which has room for six bags.

“It’s every day,” Jean said. “We just have to make sure it’s not raining.”

She says it takes 15 to 20 minutes for the water to evaporate so that the bags are dry and ready to be used again.

Johnson said she’s hopeful that by the time the cold weather returns, the state will allow hair salons to go back to using cloth capes more than once before they have to be washed.

She says the garbage bags are somewhat warmer than cloth but do a better job of catching loose hairs.

Johnson, 75, said the reaction from customers has been favorable.

“We’ve gotten a lot of thank yous — they feel safe,” she said.

Johnson says her employees still use traditional cloth capes for jobs involving perms and hair dyeing, as well as for some physically large customers.

And her staff still uses smaller cloth capes for children who come in for haircuts.

She also says she’s thinking of using inexpensive plastic parkas for single-use capes.

Johnson said she’s not the only one coming up with novel ideas as an alternative to cloth capes. She says a female friend who owns a dry cleaner has been using the thin-plastic clothes coverings as single-use capes.

Before she thought of using the large, black garbage bags, Johnson had already isolated each of her cutting stations from one another by suspending uncolored shower curtains from the ceiling.

She came up with that idea after watching online virtual tours of other hair salons.

And when she wasn’t immediately able to find plexiglass to use as a front counter barrier between customers and her receptionist, Johnson said that employee, Nicole Perry, used a plastic picture frame in the salon until they could get a hold of the real thing.

“I think one of us must have been a Girl Scout,” Johnson said, referring to the knack of being resourceful.

It’s not just disposable hair-cutting capes that some salon and barbershop owners are having trouble getting their hands on.

Johnson says her normal supplier hasn’t been able to get Barbicide, which is the distinctive blue-colored disinfectant used to disinfect combs and cutting shears. She said she managed instead to find some next door at the Sally Beauty retail store.

Customers who come into Crew Cuts have their temperature taken by means of a no-contact thermometer and must answer a handful of COVID-19 health-related questions.

During the two months she was closed, Johnson says she applied and qualified for the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program, which forgives loans if they are spent on payroll and certain other business expenses.

“I was so worried before that,” she said. “Thank God, because it kept me in business.”

Johnson says most but not all of her former employees returned to work after she reopened. She said she still needs to hire four more hair stylists.

Johnson says the extra $600 per week provided by the federal government — to people who were laid off and qualified for unemployment benefits — has presented an impediment to some small business owners, whose former employees are willing to wait until their benefits run out before returning to work.

“I do understand why they do it. But your job is more important in the long run,” she said.

Nogeiro, who ordered the disposable capes through Amazon that she said were too small to use, says she was compensated for the cost of her order after filing a grievance against the company that sold her the product.