Rubbish Riddle

Scott Hardie | April 27, 2015
Another weird thing has been happening to Kelly and me lately. It has me stumped.

Our rental house came with one trash can, but it's rather small and the lid doesn't fasten tightly, so we don't use it. We keep it empty in a little alcove behind a bush on the side of the house, outside and out of sight. We bought three big trash cans of our own and keep those inside the garage, and we use 2-3 of those every week to take out the trash. We only use the small original can on very rare occasions when there's a lot to throw away, and on those occasions, we only put trash inside it on Monday night when it's time to put the cans on the curb. When we reclaim the empty cans from the curb on Tuesday, back to the alcove it goes, empty.

Twice in the last few months, I have come home late in the week and found the small original can knocked over in the yard beside the alcove, and a Hefty bag that had been inside it ripped open and the contents strewn about, as if an animal got inside. The trash reeks as if it had been rotting in the Florida heat and humidity for weeks. It definitely looks like our trash judging from the contents (Lean Cuisine and Fancy Feast and other brands that we use daily).

It's easy enough to surmise that a bag of our trash must have sat in that can for a few weeks before a stray dog or raccoon smelled it and ripped it open looking for scraps of food, but what I can't figure out is how our trash got into that unused can. When we produce a full bag of trash during the week, we put it in one of the big cans in the garage, never in the small can in the alcove for exactly the reason that we don't want an animal getting into it. Kelly swears that she's not putting them there, and I'm certainly not doing it. The small can only gets touched on a rare Monday night when we have too much trash to fit in the other three cans, in which case we put it directly on the curb, full. The next day, the trash collectors leave the cans upside-down with the lids off, forcing us to turn it upright and see inside before closing it, so we know that it's empty again before we put it back. How is trash getting inside?

Scott Hardie | April 27, 2015
About six months ago, I did notice that neighbors had added to our trash. We set out a large pile of broken-down cardboard boxes for recycling, and we later noticed that someone had tossed a few extra boxes on the top. It's not impossible that a neighbor is stashing their extra trash in our spare outside can, but the contents really do look like ours.

Does one of our neighbors dislike us enough (or have some other reason like mental illness) to take one of the bags from the big cans on the curb overnight on Monday night and hide it in the small unused can to spite us?

I'd prefer not to keep the spare can in the garage since there's no room for it, and I'd prefer not to throw it away since it came with the house, but I'll entertain those options if this happens again.

Scott Hardie | April 29, 2015
With help from a friend, we finally put it together.

First it got stranger: I went to take out the trash last night, and found loose unbagged trash inside one can in the garage. Kelly didn't put it there, and I didn't put it there, so what's left? Ghosts?

No, it's the maid service. They visit once a month and insist on emptying our trash bins around the house despite our protests that it's not necessary. I've seen them take an occasional bag with them when they leave, and I figured that they disposed of it for us, but no; they must be throwing it away in that forgotten trash can outside the house. I'll have a word with them next month about that, and about tossing loose food wrappers and used Kleenex in our trash cans without bagging it.

Steve West | April 29, 2015
Mystery solved. It wasn't keeping me awake but I was curious.

Samir Mehta | April 29, 2015
[hidden by request]

Matthew Preston | May 1, 2015
Now THAT is a first-world problem if I've ever heard of one! ;-)

Scott Hardie | May 2, 2015
Good point, Matthew. :-) The service is mostly pretty good, other than this. The first local maid service that we used was terrible: The cleaning itself was fine, but they'd send people on the wrong days or not at all, they once lost our key, and they ignored a request to suspend service while we were dealing with Kelly's mother passing away. We switched to another local service that was better, but they suddenly went out of business and stopped returning messages. Finally we tried a national service and have had no real complaints until this, and this is really just a misunderstanding.