Trash Can Mystery

We share two rolling trash bins with the people downstairs that sit in the back of the house. Every Monday night, the bins get pulled to the curb for trash pickup. We noticed that every time we went to take our garbage out and opened the lid of the trash bin, there would be random pieces of unbagged garbage just sitting on top: an empty cereal box (Special K), used kleenexes (crumpled into balls), an opened tray of uncooked chicken breast (Gold'n Plump), floss (surprising). It looked like they would get up and walk outside every time they had something to throw away. Seems a little inefficient, but whatever. We were already weary of their ability to properly use a garbage can, so this only added to our theory. The stench coming from these bins is overpowering, especially in the summer when unbagged food sat cooking in the hot sun all day. I developed a strict procedure to follow every time we needed to take a bag of trash out. It requires a balance of strong hand-eye coordination and quick movement, and I have detailed it for you below.

This One's About Poop

We share a front porch with the people downstairs. Our front doors sit side by side and there are shared steps that lead down our front yard to the sidewalk and street. We (as in the upstairs people) like to refer to this front porch/step area as "the stoop." Our duplex sits on a relatively busy road about a block off of a very heavily-trafficked lake. We enjoy sitting on the stoop on late summer evenings, sipping on a beer and/or gluten-free cider and watching rich people drive by. We also like to use our stoop for things like entering and exiting our apartment. Never having lived in a neighborhood where it was technically considered "safe" to sit in front of your house after the sun sets, it is definitely an understatement to say that we really enjoyed hanging out on the stoop during the first couple of weeks of our move.

Then came the shit. Literally.