Garbage post

No, not a junk pile of ideas; a post literally about garbage.

You see, since the week before Labor Day I've been taking the garbage out the front, loading it into the car and driving it around to the alley to drop in the cans, since during the intervening weeks, we've 1. had concrete forms and 2 x 4s all over the yard, or 2. had no back steps, or 3. had back steps that weren't attached to the porch. I highly suspect that driving the garbage around led directly to the flat tire, whose cause was a nail...most likely left by the garage builder.

Now that the steps are nominally attached, this morning, between every load of laundry, I took another load to the garbage cans. First, the regular bag of garbage. Next trip, the over-full recyclables bag. Note that I only fill one of those bags every nine months or so; it was already just about full when the back steps disappeared, and was too big to drag around the house.

Third trip, out went the accumulated cardboard. Lest you think my flat has been a garbage pit, I should point out that my garbage is cleaner than most people's bathrooms. Every can and bottle is washed before being recycled; all cardboard boxes are broken down, cut to a uniform size and tied together in neat stacks. But due to the lack of easy access to the alley (and the every-other-week nature of the recycling collection), the cardboard stack stood almost two feet tall.

Next, it is the broken office chair. Here, I need to be sneaky and take it out in pieces, not putting the last piece out until the very morning of collection, lest my landlord bring it back in and add it to the junk in the basement. Ditto for the window fan.

The city collection is operating on their holiday schedule. According to their website, our regular Thursday pick up should happen on Wednesday, except of course there is the warning that they may be operating earlier (or later) than the adjusted schedule...which is why I'm taking everything out on Monday.

Who would have thought refuse collection could be so complicated.