Starting with a clean slate
the first substack in a substack about thoughts of questionable and actual import.
It’s 2023. I was born in 1998 or so.
I like to clean because I like things being clean.
Today, we’re talking about a specific category of clean: trash can clean.
When I was in first grade or so, my friend Rebecca came over and my mom let us take lunch up to my room. I took a trash bag because, clean. Or maybe I grabbed it from the upstairs closet once we were finished because, again, clean.
A while later, maybe a few weeks, my mom wanted to clean under my bed. I said no, let’s wait till tomorrow. No, she said, tonight.
She reached under the bed and pulled out a trash bag. Lunch trash. I can still picture an empty applesauce cup with the foil partially attached, paper towels, zippy bags.
“Is this from your lunch with Rebecca?”
“. . . . yes.”
That’s it! I felt bad, she was nice about it. There wasn’t a terrible natural consequence—nothing was rotten or had grown legs and crawled into the rest of the house.
Trash can clean.
Trash can clean is understanding the use of different trash cans and treating them accordingly. Take my childhood lunch story: only some trash cans are food trash cans. Definitely beds are not trash cans. But even a bedroom trash can does not accept food. Just the kitchen trash can.
There’s bathrooms trash cans. These may take wet items and various fluids but still should not take food. Not because it won’t get switched in time, but because food in the bathroom is gross, even if it’s in the trash can.
There’s paper trash cans. These are your desk or living room or bedroom trash cans: only dry things, like paper and plastic. This is sanitary, but it’s also efficient—you only have to take a paper trash can out once a month or so if there’s not fluids or food in it.
Trash Can Clean Level One: Complete.
There’s another level.
Trash cans shouldn’t be kept full. Makes sense, it gets full, you take it out. But they also should be kept empty:
Any single item that takes up 30% of the total available space in the trash can should be put into a different, larger trash can.
If you use up a shampoo bottle, and your bathroom trash can is small, you should carry that bottle to the next closest paper trash can, provided it is larger than the bathroom trash can, and provided the shampoo bottle is not wet. If the only trash can of appropriate size is the kitchen trash can, take the shampoo bottle to the kitchen. That is where it belongs. If you happen to be going to the kitchen shortly after leaving the bathroom, take the bottle there even if you pass appropriate, smaller trash cans. The kitchen trash can is the best place for most trash. It is taken out the most often and is the biggest. And if you compost, it shouldn’t smell. No trash will smell, if you compost.
Except! If you get a package in the mail, don’t go for the kitchen trash can. Don’t fold the box into layers and squeeze it in, even if you can. This blocks later-arriving trash and requires you to take the trash to the dumpster sooner. Stash the item in a Large-Items Trash Area. In my apartment, this is the floor. Nevermind. As long as it’s dry, it will be fine there.
Efficiency is decreasing the number of times you touch something. If you put larger items in larger trash cans, your smaller trash cans stay empty longer, and you don’t have to take them out as often.
Granted, if you touched the shampoo bottle for less time by tossing it straight from the shower into the bathroom trash can, that might decrease the number/times touched more than carrying it to the kitchen.
You could measure and compare. If you like to spend your time thinking about trash. I’m not interested in arguing that this method is efficient. Maybe for me it is, maybe for you it isn’t. I don't care if you follow the guidelines of Trash Can Clean.
Nevertheless, here they are.