DESIDERATA

I am shamelessly borrowing this first one from Swedish Death Cleaning but I swear by it. On days when I’m just at my limit and overwhelmed by the house and, well, my life, I start with taking out the trash. Maybe it’s symbolic or maybe I’m overthinking it but there is something that makes the whole house feel cleaner, even when the floors are still dirty and the laundry is still in a pile and I’m afraid to look in most of the closets.

Plus, it just smells better.

It is also quite possible that I am extremely susceptible to subliminal messaging or whatever that is. Let’s not overthink that either.

So now that we have a little routine down, let’s start with taking out the trash.

The non-negotiables:

• Walk through your house with a garbage bag and pick up anything you can see that belongs in the bin. I am always so sure that my youngest only eats in the kitchen and dining room but lo and behold, there are millions of bits of granola bar wrappers ev-er-y-where. So either they’re breeding in the air vents or my rules are never as followed as closely as I’d like. I run a tight ship. Either way, the point is that there are always just little bits and things that can probably just get tossed. So do a quick walk through. Don’t go through drawers or under beds or any of that – just focus on what you see.
• Empty all the bins. Bathrooms, kitchen, etc.
• Take it ALL out. Put it in the bin outside or in your car to take to recycling, whatever your system is of physically removing trash from your home, do that. And yes, that stack of empty Amazon shipping boxes. Take those too.
• Deep clean the bins. I love the angry orange cleaner for the tough jobs. Honestly mostly for the smell. My all-purpose cleaner is fantastic and smells lovely but something about that citrus just smells CLEAN, you know? So give it a good spray, inside and out, let it sit for a few mins, and then wipe. Use a cotton swab (or a steamer for you fancy people) to get in all the little nooks and crannies. Alternatively, you can fill up a bathtub with warm water and dish soap and give them a good soak and scrub in there if you have a lot to manage.

The maybe negotiables:

• Get trash bags you love. Weird? Yes. But sometimes the old plastic grocery sack bin liner aesthetic just really gets to me. Pick some liners that work, cut down on odors (but without the chemical smell), and stock your home with it. Because some times it’s the smallest things that make a big impact, as silly as bin liners are.
• Put dryer sheets in your bin before you put in the liner. I’ve seen tons of methods with cotton balls and oil, baking soda, fancy disks of things, but for me, nothing works as well or is as easy as just a dryer sheet.

Smarter, not harder (smart home integration)

Put bin liners on an automatic shipment. You might have to adjust it often at first to get the right frequency but it’s one less thing to think about!

Maintenance:

Immediate: clean up any spills when they happen. Seems intuitive but you would not believe the gross stuff that just gets dumped and the lid gets closed and the whole mess is forgotten about. Or maybe that’s just my house (but please be kind and pretend like it’s yours too)

Routine: whenever you switch your bin liner, give the inside of the lid and the outside a quick wipe-down with all purpose cleaner.

Deep clean: set a reminder in your calendar for every week to do the thorough wipe-down and cleaning all the crevices. It sounds like a lot now but after 3 weeks, I promise it will be a 1 minute task and EASY. I do mine on Monday nights since my trash day is Tuesday and so I know I will be emptying all the bins that night.

Your turn:

Do you have a favorite method for keeping trash odors down?

Related: if you have any tips for ones that keep dogs out, pass it on! Carl (dog 1), is a Houdini with trash cans. Motion detection lid, step on lid, push top lid, he can open them all. Which is never a problem until he wants to punish us for going to get ice cream without him (yes, seriously. Just ice cream. He knows). It’s really a whole thing and hilariously annoying.

Enjoy that fresh smelling house.