Rotating Rubbish Bins

Sharing a short story. Hopefully, you enjoy it.

Sometime last year, I found that our existing rubbish bin was not sufficient for our use case. Hardly surprising considering, with the addition of a new family member (my son), our rubbish bin is filled with diapers and baby wipes.

I enquired with my local council. My request to upgrade to a larger rubbish bin was going to cost $500. This includes a one-off fee of $200 to collect the old bin and provide a new one. Also including a $300 a year increase in fees. This is probably a short-term expense because as my son grows, I will need to downgrade, resulting in another $200 for the changeover.

I am not opposed to paying and in most cases, I just pay and get on with it. However, that day, the tone of the council customer representative did not sit well with me.

I have a habit of looking out the window. It's calming. The following Friday morning, I saw the rubbish collecting truck picking up the rubbish from the opposite side of my home and within the hour the same truck picked up my trash from the front of my home. Means, it does a round trip.

I thought 💡, why don’t I put my rubbish bin on the opposite side to be collected. Once that is done, I refill it and place it on my side to be collected again. Therefore, my rubbish bin is emptied twice.

At initial thoughts, it seemed to be too much work. However, it's just 3 big bags of diapers a week, which are in my garage anyway. So, I tried it the following week. And it worked as anticipated and with ease.

This may be frowned upon and may even be against the rules. However, I have been doing this for the last six months. This surprised me. I am too lazy to keep this going. However, each time, there is a strange feeling that I have gotten away with something. This feels good. This feeling motivates me to do this every Friday morning. It’s certainly not about the money. It’s about that feeling of getting away with something. Shockingly, I do not have a single ounce of guilt. On the contrary, I feel kind of like an evil genius. Anyone who knows me knows that I am no genius.

Do you do something because of a similar feeling? A feeling of getting away with something?