Sunday, April 6, 2014

More trash talkin'

Here we are on a beautiful Saturday morning on our way to the dump, a.k.a. the pit of doom.
The truck is loaded with approximately three months' worth of trash, which is about the maximum amount 
I can accumulate in the garage before having to park the Ranger or the truck outside.


I've chronicled my disdain for the dump here ad nauseam. This disdain turned to abject loathing during my most recent trip. 
I sat in line for an entire hour, waiting for my turn to toss my trash in the pit of doom.
There had to be a better way. As I sat there stewing, it came to me ... trash compactor.

When I got home, I did my googling and learned that a trash compactor could reduce my volume of trash by 75%. 
That would mean instead of going to the dump four or five times a year, I would only have to go one or two times. 
Sold to the lady in the middle of nowhere! I ordered one online from Lowe's...


 ...and picked it up at the store this week. 

Here's a story I could never tell you while my dad was alive, since he was a faithful reader of the blog
 and I feared he would yell at me. My truck no longer has a tailgate. I lost it to a hay injury four years ago. 
The bed of the truck was loaded with hay, and I was pulling the gooseneck horse trailer loaded with hay, and when I turned, 
the gooseneck pushed down the hay in the truck bed and bent the rails and the tailgate would never close thereafter, 
so I removed it. Which isn't a big deal unless you're hauling something which might slide out, 
in which case you install a redneck tailgate (a big fat board that fits snugly against the sides). 




Anyway, I got the trash compactor home and unloaded it using the tried and true
"slide it down to the ground carefully without dropping it on your toe" method.
At that point, I figured the hard part was over.




 Wrong. Assembly was required. There were casters and lots of nuts and bolts involved.




But it went smoothly. I had the right sized socket and tightened down those 16 nuts so they would never come loose.






So I uninstalled all 16 screws/bolts/whatever, turned them over, and tightened the nuts again.
I'm quite sure I heard Dad laughing.



So there it is – the answer to all my waste woes.



Too bad all the packing materials are too big to stuff in the compactor.



34 comments:

  1. I'll bet your "kids" would like to play with those big boxes as much as mine used to!

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  2. The Farmer's Husband long ago stopped bothering me about my garbage aversion issues. He has learned to roll with it. Our family of five produces one can of garbage every other month. Mostly that is because our town doesn't recycle EVERYTHING. I compost, I reuse and I purchase bulk items to produce less trash. In California, where recycling is done for you--by law, we ended up only with meat garbage. It is a reality that if you don't produce your own meat, there are contaminated plastics in your life.

    Oh, well. It keeps me from worrying about my aging looks...

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  3. Firestarter.... cardboard makes excellent firestarter material.

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  4. Way to go, Carson. Life is good at The MSN An hour in line at the dump would make me
    want to change things up a little. Done good with the assembly.
    I too improved my life on Saturday a little with a new
    vacuum cleaner. It is so powerful that if I just held the nozzle upright it would suck the dust
    out of my house and me with it. Wow, what a treat.

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    Replies
    1. Please share the brand/make/model of your powerful vacuum cleaner...I'm in vacuum cleaner hell right now.

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  5. oooooo, aaaaaa very pretty and shiny!

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  6. Cool compactor....love the diamond plate exterior...very garage worthy. We also have no trash pick up where we live ...but we have local convenience centers where you sort all your trash, but rarely is there a line. Because you have to separate it all we go often. Plus we learned quickly to bring as little trash home as possible. Thus packaging stays at the store and things like fast food trash are tossed at the restaurant or into the gas station trash can before we get home. But I wouldn't trade living in the country for anything!

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  7. About the screws - "righty tighty" - "leftie loosey".

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  8. Oooopss! Ha! You meant did the screws go UP or DOWN! Figures I would wonder if it was left or right. Guess you can tell I'm not the mechanical one around here. ;)

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  9. Can't you burn what you can in a pit? Looks like it would be a bad day when going to "THE PIT". Have a good one and hugs to all.

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  10. Fact#1: Instruction sheets should always be written by women.
    Fact#2: Vacuum cleaners should only be designed by women.
    Fact#3: Four letter words never have more power or meaning than when uttered by women who have tried to make sense out of directions written by men, and/or by trying to exist with a vacuum cleaner designed by a man. I mention the vacuum cleaner, because I currently have seven...it's a long story...and I haven't had enough coffee yet to even begin to explain...which if you can just use your imagination, and put all the four letter words in the universe together in every possible order and configuration, would come pretty close to the way I feel. Your hell is the garbage dump site...mine is vacuum cleaners. Let's just say, I tend to burn them up...OR they're all evil, ill-conceived, wimpy, worthless pieces of TRASH! Sorry. Sorry, everyone. Sigh. Let's just say it's been a long week. OH, make that eight (8) vacuum cleaners. I forgot about my shop-vac...the end. Let's just thank goodness for trash compactors. If only they came super-sized enough for vacuum cleaners! ? The end, for real.

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    1. I support and echo everything you wrote here.Vacuums, if I really believed that 500$ one worked as good as they say I might steal something in order to buy it, but I no longer believe any vacuum works like they claim. Nice to know I'm not alone.I gave a few moments of serious thought to spousal murder over a vacuum comment once.

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    2. Also, the lint trap in many dryers was designed by men. My MIL had one that pulled up out of the dryer, over the top of the machine. Of course the lint was trapped on the bottom of the thing---it fell out on top of the dryer, every. single. time. Don't think my MIL cussed much though. :D

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    3. When I was a teenager and earned my spare change by mowing lawns, I told my mother that lawnmowers were designed by MEN who Did-Not-Mow-Their-Own-Grass! :(((. Long pull cords, hard to start, lots of noise, poor design for bagging/no bagging, pinch fingers , difficult to adjust mowing height and handle-angle for a short girl and lowsy cutting to boot. Many years later after my mother purchased a Honda self propelled (no affiliation) .... I Finally did not dread the mowing so much. A good self-propelled mower isn't cheap --but the Honda I purchase in 1999 is still going strong. Still has a long pull cord, but it starts whether cold or hot, bag is easy to work with and it gets the job done.


      As for the vacuums ... my mother purchased an Electrolux cannister (long skinny cannister) in the 1960's. She gave it to my Dad's office in the 1980s and purchased a new one. We still have it ... and a newer one purchased in the late 1990s(one upstairs one downstairs) . They too are not cheap ... but they last and they work. Bags are a breeze to change , no spills.

      The old adage --> You get what you pay for , still is true. (for a few things).

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  11. Love the tailgate and trash compactor and that you can still make your dad laugh :)

    I have a suggestion. Maybe you could get friendly with someone in town who has a dumpster. You could call ahead and make occasional deposits. Not six months worth at a time, just once in a while. I learned that from the contractor who has now remodeled all three of our bathrooms. He drives by his buddy's place of business regularly (half a mile from Lowe's) and keeps an eye on the dumpster. Just a thought.

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  12. Sooo....was that like a "DUH" moment when you realized you could have done this years ago and not had so many trips to the pit? I love the tailgate also, will have to keep that in mind.
    To Anonymous: get rid of your carpeting. I'ts so much easier the fighting vacuum cleaners.

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  13. My sister has a trash compactor and loves it. She had one in their previous home, her husband decided they needed a bigger lot so he could build another garage, and her main stipulation was that her kitchen MUST have a trash compactor or room to install one. That was close to 20 years ago and it's still working; I hope they still make them like they used to. Of course, now we have curbside recycling here in the big city so it takes a lot longer to fill, but she still would not give it up.

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  14. waouw! nice machine you have assembled! can't wait to see it working

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  15. You could cut down all your cardboard to much smaller pieces...better yet...why can't you burn all your burnable trash? Are there rules about burning? What about a fire pit...a nice deep and safe one? ... to burn trash in... and, I seem to remember farmers in the old days used to toss stuff in a lime pit and get rid of it too.... hmmm...must go Google that one.... maybe we could all com sup with ideas that would pretty much negate having to go to the dump at all. And...there is always the pay some guy to wait in line after you agree to off load your garbage onto his truck in the line up...hahhahaha.....sure. why not? .... I'd pay somebody to wait and dump....

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  16. Ahhhh, slinging trash off the truck . . . one of my favorite memories as a Ranch Sister Sitter :) A tip that was shared by a friend - cut a piece of cardboard (from that extra stash you have) the size of the bag opening. Place it on the trash BEFORE you smoosh. It will keep the plunger much cleaner and cut down on grime, smells and the left over tidbits that might attack critters. Made a huge difference on keeping mine clean.

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    Replies
    1. What a fabulous idea. Going out to cut a piece of cardboard right now.

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  17. I sware you are so handy and resourceful and not to mention brilliant! I don't blame you I would hate to go to the dump all the time. The trash compactor will pay for itself in no time but I'm sure you already have that figured out too. Betsy

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  18. Oh it's a beauty!! Yes it was an experience going to the pit of trash, especially all the hot men...NOT! So does that mean you will have all these cute little boxes to take now?

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  19. Great idea!! I'm glad to see it lives in the garage. I was trying to figure out how you were going to jury-rig another cabinet in your kitchen to fit it in. :)

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  20. PS...Don't forget and accidentally put in a glass bottle---talk about an explosive noise. Plus, it's hard on the motor to crush bottles.

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  21. That's an excellent idea...hmmm....now you've got me thinking. We took a drive to the local dumpster
    and it was too full, so we had to drive our trash back home. It's still in the back of my husband's truck. :o(

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  22. An American in Tokyo4/6/14, 6:23 PM

    I was thinking the same thing as BumbleVee, why don't you just burn the cardboard??

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  23. You are amazing! Think of all the extra hours you have now to trail ride instead of sitting in line at the dump!

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  24. That sounds like a good purchase for you, so you don't have to make as many dump runs.

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  25. So, I re-read the pit of doom post and I'm thinking that I would rather be in "the pit of despair" (said in my best raspy creepy voice) than the pit of doom. Never got the draw for a trash compactor for city folk who have trash pick up twice a week... but living in the middle of nowhere? great idea!

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  26. Great idea!!

    My truck has what everyone THINKS is a hay injury, since the part of the bed next to the cab has a distinct outward-facing roundness to it. Our neighbor said that the same thing happened to his truck while hauling round bales. My truck bed got its rounded shape when my husband ran the golf cart up the ramps and into the truck and slammed into it.

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  27. Ohhhh screws upside down! LOL Obviously, i never knew your father but i heard him laughing when i read this. Never a dull moment at 7MSN.

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  28. Had a trash compactor in my last house. Just don't forget that the trash weighs the same, it's just in a smaller space. Don't overload your arms or your truck.

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  29. I so relate to the dump thing! I live in Maine and we have no trash pickup unless you pay $20/mo which i am too cheap to do. Few women go to dump-- plus the guys on the bulldozers are weird...like they're trying to deliberately scare driving over the trash mountains toward you. Plus it's very hilly and rutted. Anyway glad to know somebody else deals with--I've procrastinated all winter and now I have a room under garage I have to empty out... great birds @ dump though! Ann from Maine

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