i cannot possibly express how much of a gigantic pain in the ass this is; it’s making more more slovenly than i want to be because it’s such an inconvenience to throw stuff away.
like should i buy a hand truck? that wouldn’t help for garbage bags
Making more frequent, smaller trips might make it less of a pain? Maybe stop by the dumpster if it’s on the way to/from a daily route you need to take?
Yeah, I would just make it a habit to always leave the home with a trash bag and drop it on the way to wherever I’m heading. Using large trashbags makes you wait until the bag is full. Buy those small 13 gallon (or smaller) bags. I use all my grocery bags as mini trash bags hung on cupboard doors. Makes it easier.
Is the dumpster within line of sight? If so, zip line.
Or zip line to your trunk and then drive it to the dumpster. Afraid to say I have in fact done this… Long rope one end tied to balcony support and the other on the support arm for the trunk then tied bags together in pairs and sent them down riding a wash cloth (i was worried friction would tear through the bags…). Then walk down and load it in the trunk, untie the car and drove it to the dumpsters like 1/4 mile away.
I did it in the middle of the night, less witnesses.
If not? Trebuchet.
Trebuchet! Trebuchet! Trebuchet!
Out of curiosity: what is a “car’s drive away” according to fellow Americans? I mean how many meters would that be?
In my experience, about five or six parking meters.
What about e-meters?
About tree fiddy e-meters
I’m guessing they live in a large sprawling suburban apartment complex whose trash facilities were designed to be out of the way and unobtrusive rather than functional and convenient.
My last apartment was in a place kind of like that. It sat on a lot that was probably about eight city blocks. For the entire complex they had eight dumpsters in four trash enclosures around the perimeter, two of which were toward the front of the complex, and the other two toward the middle. If you lived at the back of the complex you’d have to carry your trash for at least a block and a half to dispose of it. It wasn’t uncommon to see people driving to the trash enclosure with bags of trash balanced on their car’s trunk lid.
It’s when you are speeding down the highway and huck bags of garbage out your window, then you drive the car away. It’s the most economical way to dispose of waste because it doesn’t cost anything or end up in a landfill.
Am American and there’s not enough context to know. I’m guessing OP lives in a city, and is using “a car’s drive” to mean any distance that he doesn’t want to drag trash to. Anything longer than a city block, maybe?
I give op props, because I refuse to live anywhere that doesn’t have an in-unit washer/dryer and dishwasher, much less a place that has no elevator and no trash shoot. Fuuuuck that.
I guess, just a tad too long for an easy walk.
One American football field
There’s a guy that throws his trash out the window on TikTok. If it makes it in the can it’s a good week and if he misses it’s a bad week. Calls it the garboscope. My point here is that you can at least skip the stairs
What does “the dumpster is a car’s drive away” mean?
The dumpster is so far away that they recommend driving a car instead of walking.
That’s the obvious interpretation.
If it is the correct interpretation, in what country is this legal? I’d be getting the tenants together to take the landlord(s) to court, if that is the correct interpretation and it is a country with laws about this sort of thing. But I don’t know if it is the correct interpretation or what country we’re talking about.
The US has very anti-tenant leanings in the judiciary, and bureaucracy overall.
So does every capitalist country. It’s very hard to imagine it being legal to rent an apartment without providing trash disposal.
Are we talking an actual car’s drive, or a USians idea of a distance that cannot be walked?
Yes. Europeans will walk 3 miles for a coffee, but consider 3 hours a long drive. Americans will drive 100 ft to take out trash, but will drive for 12 hours straight to leave their state.
Likely the latter.
The dumpster is too far to walk to when carrying garbage bags, I’d guess.
But how far is that?
About 30 bathtubs long.
It usually means you reside in a multi-block sized apartment complex and that the dumpsters are on one end of the complex rather than being centrally located, and your apartment is on the other end… and those distances feel doubled if it is raining, or there is snow or ice on the ground.
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Find someone that lives in the complex that will be your trash valet for a small fee. Or post a listing on Craigslist for hiring your own personal trash valet.
Or start a small business and be the trash valet for your complex and make money off your chore.
Gonna be honest I have no idea what a cars drive away is. But 4 staircases sounds like a lot, so is there a way to just a sail it out the window onto the car? And if it’s about the distance a bike with a cart on the back has helped me a ton for trash and groceries personally.
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Holy shit that site is so bad on mobile
When did we decide it was okay to open the play store without user input?
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Yeah Firefox prompted me as well, sadly cancel still doesn’t let you view this and is just an endless loop. Weird that they insist this much on using the app that the other option is useless… I’m guessing only non mobile version works ok.
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sensible too!
You can get a cart that’s more along the lines of a hand truck - more vertically shaped. They’re often folding too, so you don’t have to take up toouch space. A regular hand truck would work too if that’s all that’s available by taking the whole trash bin rather than just loose bags
Something like this should do well as long as one doesn’t mind looking like an urban granny.
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I did forget about the stairs. In that case I’d ask OP how big the window is
Zipline
How is it possible for your building not to have an elevator up/down those four floors? I thought ADA would mandate that.
Don’t quote me but only something like 5% of an apartment building needs to be ada accessible. So like as long as ground floor has a certain amount of ada units the higher floors don’t need to have ada access at all.
That’s terrible. I’m imagining moving mattresses and couches in… yikes.
I’ve only lived on a second floor once. Lucky my sister had strange guy friends to help with that stuff.
To add to the other comments: try to reduce how much stuff you generate that needs to be thrown in the dumpster. Of course, from the sounds of things, juggling a small bag of trash plus a bin of paper, a bin of plastic, a bin of glass and a bin of all other recyclables would be even more of a headache. Maybe start up a program with the other tenants who must be having the same issues?
Window.
My idea: Buy a big trash can with wheels and a lid that seals. If no wheels then add wheels by strapping it to a hand truck. Add trash until full then empty in dumpster. Small bags into large can then large can into dumpster.
Also, you did not mention recycling. How does that work where you are? Most of my waste goes into recycling.
