I have a confession to make and some of you are going to find it odd.
I have never in 25 or so years of adulthood bought my own trash bin to take to the curb.
In both of the houses I owned in Georgia, the trash bin came with the trash service. You’d sign up for garbage service either with the city or a private company, depending on where you lived, and on the next trash day they’d show up and plop a trash bin and a recycling bin at the end of your driveway.
For yard trash, some cities would do it separately, while others did it on the same day as your trash was picked up. In fact, one Georgia city would let you just rake all your yard trash down to the curb and they’d come scoop it up. Efficiency at its best. No bags, no bundles, no additional trash bins, just the local government doing you a solid.
At our previous home, yard trash was picked up on the same day as the regular trash. You could put it in a paper bag or a plastic bag, toss it in your regular old trash bin, or if it wasn’t too big, just lay it loose next to the rest of the trash.
So, you can imagine my surprise when the city of Havre de Grace declined to take my trash that was nicely set out in five plastic bags one fine Monday morning. I was perplexed. Flummoxed. Well, honestly, it took me about three weeks to remember that there was a separate yard trash day, but anyway, there I sat, wondering what I had to do to get the nice trash man to haul away my trash.
My neighbor texted me the city’s trash requirements, for which I am eternally grateful. Havre de Grace will take your yard trash in three forms. Paper bags, bundles, or a trash bin. I choice option C, because buying one trash bin is going to be much more cost effective than buying another set of bags for me to lose in the garage and I have enough trouble tying my shoes, so bundling isn’t exactly a strength of mine.
Now that I had been informed about the trash codes and the remedy for my violations, I hopped into my Honda (which recently passed the Maryland state inspection) and headed to Home Depot.
Now, remember, I have never in my life done this before. Sure, when I was a kid, my parents had to buy trash cans for outside pickup, but I was too young to remember, and we had those same two trash cans for 20 years. So, I had never personally experienced the joy of buying a trash bin from Home Depot.
Did you know, that Home Depot doesn’t keep the trash cans and lids in the same place? That’s so they can stack them and not have them littering three aisles of the store. Makes sense, I suppose, but having the lids somewhere in the same ballpark would be nice. The lid for the can I picked was about four aisles away from where I found the trash bin. Then I had to figure out which lid matched my chosen bin. Fortunately, mine was included in the cost of the bin, but I noticed a few where the lid costs extra.
Not because they came that way, but because they got separated to make those nice stacks and the robber barons that run Home Depot saw a quick way to make an additional ten bucks off of everyone who needs a new trash can. It’s brilliant and also incredibly low.
Then I proceeded to the checkout with my new trash bin and I encountered my mortal enemy. The self checkout line. This particular home depot doesn’t have any full service lines. Notice here, we have the customer paying extra for the trash can lid and then having to do the work that cashiers used to do. In just the sale of one trash can they’ve already saved money on a cashier and made extra on the poor sap who needed a trash can.
Someday I’m going to open a hardware store, and it’s going to be staffed entirely by human beings who will carry your trash can to the register, match the lid to the bin without you having to wander four aisles like you’re on a scavenger hunt, and then load the whole thing into your car while you stand there feeling like a person of some importance. The lids will be attached to the cans. All of them. With a small piece of twine if necessary. I don’t care. We’ll figure it out.
My hardware store will also have a guy whose only job is to know where everything is, and he will not say “I think it’s in aisle seven” and then walk away. He will take you there personally and wait while you decide.
In case you care, the trash bin now resides at the end of my driveway on yard trash day, doing exactly what it is supposed to do, and I have to say, there is a small but undeniable satisfaction in watching the truck haul it away. Twenty-five years of someone else handling this particular detail of adult life, and here I am, a homeowner in Maryland, finally a man with his own trash bin. My mother would be proud. Or at least mildly amused.
