These days, I am obsessed with Garbage. My happiest day is when the rubbish trucks come to our house and empties our recycling and garbage cans. Most of the time, they’re both completely full again, 5 minutes after they’re picked up. I stage the trash and recycling so that when I hear the trucks, I go out and get the cans and immediately fill them up with all the stuff I’ve not been able to fit into it from the previous week.
It’s not something I’m particularly proud of, but its a necessity. Every day, on top of the bags of shredding we’ve got this week, I’m going through cupboards in the garage and in tops of closets. I have all of Emilie’s room to deal with too. If it can’t be donated, sold, given away to family or friends, or recycled, it is being rehomed at the local land fill. Don’t worry, I tend to be super green, so this is the absolute last resort.
Our garbage service only has ‘big item pickup’ once every two months. It’s a nice service and they’ll take a couch and crush it with a special truck and take it away. I know this because they took one of our couches that I tried to donate but it was rejected by the donation truck driver.
‘Well.’ he said after looking at the couch. ‘It has a couple of small snags.’
I looked at him, incredulous. I was donating a couch that had cost thousands at retail.
‘It’s chenille.’ I explained. ‘Its bound to have a couple of small snags, as you say.’
He rubbed his chin. ‘Yeah, we don’t take couches that aren’t pristine.’
My eyes rolled in my head like a slot machine. What?? The Salvation Army doesn’t take anything but perfect furniture for DONATION? I was giving it to them for free.
‘So you only pick up from the Crate and Barrel warehouse directly now – cut out the pesky retail customers?’
He was unmoved. So I had no choice. I put it out on the curb and watched as the big truck with the crusher came and took one half of it. There is a size limit to what they’ll take on ‘big item pick up days.’
So tonight, we loaded the other half of our couch into Mary Jane. Jeff will do a dump run on his way to work tomorrow, along with some old tires and a bunch of other miscellaneous crap. And today the garbage man comes to empty our cans. Its like waiting for Santa Claus, but in reverse. He takes away and leaves nothing behind. My new definition of Christmas! I am over joyed that more stuff will be leaving our house.
And my car is full up for donation too. The guys at The Goodwill drop off location and I are buddies now. They come running our when I pull up.
‘Another load, eh?’
‘That’s right. And there’s some good stuff in here. You might want to take a look at a handbag for your wife.’
He winks at me and gives me the donation slip.
Tomorrow will by the best day of the week. And I’ll only have to wait 7 days to do it all over again.
Viva Espana 