In Worcester, like in many cities these days, you have to pay for special trash bags if you want the city to pick up your trash. The price of these has climbed steadily over the years and the bags are yellow and kind of see through. If the people who pick up the trash see recyclables in your trash bags, you get a disciplinary note. If you carefully sort your recycling bin according to the city's guidelines and then a homeless man goes through your recycling bin and messes it up, you WILL get a bright orange sticker put on your bin-a scarlet letter so to speak, stating that if you mess up again, the city will no longer pick up your recycling. Apparently I am the Hester Prynne of the Worcester trash/recycling program. So you can imagine how excited I was to move to a building that had its own dumpster. Take that, city of Worcester and your semi-public shaming of those who can't handle the strict recycling rules!
Well, little did I realize that having a dumpster attracts its own set of problems. Yes, you get to avoid the wrath of the zero sort recycling guys, but you also have to deal with everyone and their mother (and their son...and their cousin...and their aunt...) dumping their trash into your dumpster. Because really, if you live in a low income neighborhood in the Woo, chances are you aren't going to want to spend your hard earned money on expensive special yellow trash bags, and if you see a dumpster, it's the ghetto equivalent of hitting the lottery. Except that the people who actually live in the building are paying for that dumpster and everyone else is just dumpster free loading. I've seen cars drive up with trunk loads of non-regulation trash bags. Where do those bags go? Dumpster. There's a woman down the street who makes her 7 year old nephew walk their trash over. Where does he put it? Dumpster. The result of this is that there often isn't enough space in the dumpster for the residents of the building to put their trash. So we end up with overflowing trash and garbage storms (For those of you who don't live in the city, this is when it's really windy out and trash blows around like crazy, like fallen leaves might do in the suburbs.)
The dumpster is also a favorite resting place of the local feral cat population. Nothing wakes you up in the morning like throwing your trash bags into the dumpster on your way to work and having members of the neighborhood feral cat gang spring out at you-claws flying, screeching, howling. Who needs coffee when you can have a feral cat fly into your face at 7am?! Take that, Starbucks!! Way cheaper than a non-fat caramel macchiato.
Unfortunately, our biggest dumpster problems didn't come from feral cats or neighbors, but from our own stupidity. More than once we've meant to toss our trash into the dumpster on our way to the car, and ended up tossing the keys in as well. (If Toonces the Driving Cat ever moves into our dumpster, he's going to score BIG!) There's a video of this that my loving husband took a few summers ago (You can hear the concern in his voice. Or is that sarcasm? It's hard to tell sometimes.). This was way back when we had trees! (Trees!!! Oxygen!!! We were livin' large back then!) If you're my facebook friend, then you should be able to click on the link to watch the video. Otherwise, here are a few stills from the video so you can get the idea.
Climbing in...
Almost there...
Even closer...sitting on the edge now...
Inside the belly of the beast!!!
Aaaand scene!
Like I've said before...you can't fix stupid. 😉
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