All About The Bins

Getting to grips, one soiled tissue at a time

Maybe it was living in NYC for so many years — long-ago, Oscar the Grouch type trash can years— that it took til around my sixth decade to become aware of the tyranny of garbage cans, the control they have over our lives. I think the real reckoning happened when we moved to upstate New York and found out there was no municipal waste pickup.

“There’s a lone trash can in the Walmart parking lot without bars,” said one friend. “Find it and take your trash there every few days.” That was a lot of work. Other pals took their garbage to the dump - rather, transfer station - and paid by the bag; recycling was free. It was a lot of fuss and time required to dispose of household waste this way and we were sure to end up driving around with garbage and recycling in the back of our van for days or even weeks, so we quickly caved and started paying for one of the local private companies to take it away. The price kept going up but it was one less job to do, except for rolling the large plastic cans out to the curb every Wednesday night. Sometimes the only phone call I’d get the week of a holiday would be an automated message from County Waste: “This is County Waste. Due to the _________ holiday, your pickup will occur one day later.”

Of course moving is a whole other ballgame. I’ve already written about 1-800-GOT-JUNK, the last respite of the overwhelmed person who simply can’t deal with finding new homes for everything they don’t want anymore. I find myself remembering certain items I saw flying through the air into their dumptruck and feel physical pain: that chair! that end table! I thought they’d sort through it all and take out the decent stuff and make sure it went to a good home. Like how my parents told us kids our unruly puppy was going to a “nice farmer out in the country” I have to believe the treasures found a new life somewhere.

By the end of the move, when we were out of the house and staying with friends, I was haunting the alleyways of Hudson like a shadow, putting a bag here, a bag there behind businesses of the town. “Fly tipping” they call it in England. But how much money have I spent in all these places? I felt like I had enough of a financial stake in the businesses that they owed me the courtesy of taking a trash bag or two. When my daughter drove off in the Subaru, she was tasked with dumping just one more batch of empty boxes and trash bags full of those last little bits of stuff no thrift shop would take. She sent me a photo of the trashed up back seat and I felt a mother’s pride.

Meanwhile, over in England, we’ve been living in a flat in a charming seaside town. The entrance to the flat is discreetly tucked away at the back of the large apartment building or block of flats. (Welcome to my struggle between wanting to fit in vs not wanting to sound pretentious like when Madonna went British!) Entrance is along an alleyway, past the bins and down a few steps, so kind of a basement flat, but light and airy. But a couple months ago, when we were over trying to find a house to buy and Eric was playing gigs, I started noticing the bins more and more. They hadn’t been emptied in weeks. What had seemed kind of cool and charming at first (“we’re around the back, through the alleyway”) was now a nuisance.

Eric got onto the council and ended up receiving an after hours call from the local conservative MP himself. I heard them having a very civilized chat about the bins, the MP on the other end “yes, yes…completely unacceptable! Leave this with me my good man” and ended with Eric thanking him and saying “I think you should change parties, I might even vote for you then.” The guy chuckled, agreed the conservative party were a bunch of lunatics and actually did something about the problem. He lost to Labour in the election, it had to happen.

I guess I’m burying the lede here as I have a habit of doing. We’ve bought and moved into a new house!

It’s a lovely brick Edwardian house with a Victorian part added on (I think that’s right, see I feel kind of Madonna-ish saying it, like I should be wearing a sweeping dressing gown and have waved hair and painted red lips). There’s an extended walled mature garden at the back, all winding paths, water features and magical hidden areas.  The kitchen opens right out into the garden, and I’m almost expecting Sarah Lancashire or Nicola Walker (picture the kitchen in Last Tango In Halifax, or The Split) to appear at sunset with a glass of wine in hand, it’s that British and just so pretty. I’m sure we’ll add our artsy clutter in no time, but for now I’m enjoying the house being more finished and nice— while still being characterful —than any place I’ve ever lived.

The seller, a stylish, recently-divorced designer (“always buy from the gays,” our friend Blake said and he has a point), even left us some useful things like a lawn mower, rugs that fit spaces here and there perfectly —kind of like we did with the people we sold our house to. I appreciate having a kitchen bin right in place while we wait for our shipping container to arrive, but it’s funny —as nice as the Brabantia bin is, it’s not our Brabantia, a red one that it felt like I scoured the earth for. I smile when I think back to our humble kitchen in France— a sink, a table, a tiny stove with gas bottle and this under sink contraption that operated by a length of string. When the string broke, you had to use your foot to lift the lid while deftly holding the door open with one hand and using the other to dump whatever it was you were dumping. I’d just started writing a blog in earnest; was trying to learn French. I remember being so pleased when I figured out the word for trashcan — la poubelle. Incongruous - it made no sense! It was only in reading Lucy Sante’s The Other Paris that I learned Poubelle was the name of the fusspot er…man who introduced the use of waste bins in 1880s Paris. Remember the 2000s and even early 2010s when needing answers and looking things up immediately wasn’t compulsory? Seems like so long ago.

Have my standards risen, or just my OCD? No matter — call it maturity, but over the course of the last decade or so I’ve figured out that not having to touch trash is nice. Not having to do odd gyrations to scrape out scraps of food is preferable to the kitchen choreography that used to be second nature.

We’ve only been here a week and I’ve also grappled with the outdoor bins. First of all, they were tucked over to one side of the garden, next to a charming blue and white striped shed with rakes and things for tending to all the plants and flowers and trees.

“You a keen gardener , then?” asked our new neighbor. Oh shit, I thought. No? But I love the garden. And I do like being outside, especially without crippling heat, humidity, poison ivy, tick bites and mosquitoes to deal with. So I aim to learn some things and keep on top of what I can.

Anyway - the bins. There’s an intense schedule attached to the side of the fridge (an amazing fridge, with the freezer part below, so you don’t have get on your knees to make a salad!) about recycling every other Tuesday and garden waste every other Wednesday and household trash ever other…um - well it’s very comprehensive and I intend to have it all memorized by the time I die. We have a cool side gate with a carving of the Green Man on it who I’m told will keep us safe. It’s through that gate the bins must be wheeled every two weeks BUT there’s also a patio area covered with pristine white gravel.

The new kitchen

Now this is one thing that will have to go. As sleek and uniform as it looks - it’s just not for us. That’s the beauty and also the bother of having a house — you can change things that don’t suit you but…you have to change things or spend your time complaining and wishing them different. I wheeled the bins across the gravel, wishing for bigger wheels or wooden planks and then figured out that we could keep them next to the side gate and then they’d never have to pass over gravel again and be more out of sight. Is there a reason the previous owner didn’t do this? I remember a house in Catskill, all newly renovated, and the young couple that bought it kept their huge trash containers right next to the front door. Like, that was the main feature of the house! I couldn’t understand it, but maybe to them it was the most convenient place. Let us judge no man or woman for how they choose to dump their trash (unless its a communal bin).

I’ve dreamed of living in a boutique hotel

Anyway, once I got the designated bin across the gravel and out towards the street, I wasn’t sure exactly how it was supposed to sit there. In Catskill, there was an amazing truck that lifted each bin high into the air and dumped the contents into the back of the truck. Here at our new home, I looked at our neighbors left and right to see if the bin handle faced in or out. Hmmm. I’m thinking it’s a little more old-fashioned here, with bin men doing the hoisting themselves. I placed the handle out. It all seemed to go okay, as the trash ended up gone. And it’s covered by the council tax.

Wasting no time trashing this place up

There’s so much more to tell you about this move; the house. I’m kind of overwhelmed right now. I have an album coming out in just over a week and a bunch of shows coming up. All of that is labor intensive but also feels so doable, whereas managing a new world— another country, the ins and outs of a small town— feels like a daunting hill to climb. If we can just get the bins right, well that’s a good start.