So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Trenchfriend]

@2jakes

Yep. Of course, the GDR was conservated german 50's, until the end.

 

[vitanola]

Our new house doesn't have garbage pickup, unless you contract a local service. The town does provide a garbage truck once a week from 10am-11am, you can take your garbage then.

It also costs $25 to get rid of a tire, hence why I've found 16 tires on the property.

In our Michigan village we have private rubbish pickup, contracted through the village. It costs $86.00 per month for one 95 gallon rolling trash can, emptied once a week. A pickup truck load of rubbish (loaded only to the top of the bed) costs $108.00 to deposit at the transfer station. Individual 30 gallon bags cost $6.25 to drop off at the transfer station. These prices all more than trebled over the five years after all trash companies in the county were either purchased by a major national firm or were driven out of business by the same. Needless to say the county has a terrible problem with illegal dumping...

 

[2jakes]

We have "Pay As You Throw" by the city with these options:

 

[tonyb]

In our Michigan village we have private rubbish pickup, contracted through the village. It costs $86.00 per month for one 95 gallon rolling trash can, emptied once a week. A pickup truck load of rubbish (loaded only to the top of the bed) costs $108.00 to deposit at the transfer station. Individual 30 gallon bags cost $6.25 to drop off at the transfer station. These prices all more than trebled over the five years after all trash companies in the county were either purchased by a major national firm or were driven out of business by the same. Needless to say the county has a terrible problem with illegal dumping...

Wow! Yikes! Egads!

And I thought our garbage service was expensive!

 

[2jakes]

The majority of paper trash is delivered by mail to me daily.
Courtesy of the BFM ads.
I do make use of the newspaper material though.
I place it inside the bottom of Polo's liter box.
He prefers the New York Times.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Most of my trash consists of used newspapers and empty cat-food cans, which get recycled, used tea bags, and used cat litter. I wish they could think of a good way to recycle that. I accumulate a lot of cardboard boxes, which either get filled with stuff and put in the attic, repurposed around the house, or recycled. All my bottles get returned for the nickel deposit.

Any organic waste other than the cat poop -- peelings, bones, and similar scraps -- gets hucked over the backyard fence into the abandoned junkyard. Between that and the dead leaves, there's a nice ad-hoc compost heap going on there.

I'm not the only neighborhood resident who has taken advantage of this fine resource. My late neighbor who was a fisherman used to throw scraps of chum into the junkyard, and once I looked over the fence to see an entire three-foot-long dogfish looking back at me. "Maine, The Way Life Should Be."

 

[tonyb]

Most of my trash consists of used newspapers and empty cat-food cans, which get recycled, used tea bags, and used cat litter. I wish they could think of a good way to recycle that. I accumulate a lot of cardboard boxes, which either get filled with stuff and put in the attic, repurposed around the house, or recycled. All my bottles get returned for the nickel deposit.

Any organic waste other than the cat poop -- peelings, bones, and similar scraps -- gets hucked over the backyard fence into the abandoned junkyard. Between that and the dead leaves, there's a nice ad-hoc compost heap going on there.

I'm not the only neighborhood resident who has taken advantage of this fine resource. My late neighbor who was a fisherman used to throw scraps of chum into the junkyard, and once I looked over the fence to see an entire three-foot-long dogfish looking back at me. "Maine, The Way Life Should Be."

I recall as a kid envisioning a day when people routinely separated their garbage from the waste that might be recycled. That day arrived a couple three decades later.

These days I know people who generate very little garbage. Organic waste gets put in a compost bin or a worm bin and turned into fine soil amendments. Yes, those people are anomalous, and I wouldn't bet on ever seeing a worm bin alongside your average home. But back in the day people who recycled what must other people sent to the landfill were seen as rather odd.

My only real concern about urban composting is that it might attract vermin -- rodents especially. Seattle, for instance, is just thick with rats as it is (don't mention that to anyone from the Convention and Visitors Bureau).

 

[vitanola]

Well I restore and repair antique radios and phonographs for a living. This involves parting out many sets, and so I have a larger waste stream than some. I used to burn surplus cabinets in the coal furnace, but over the last six years of so natural gas is considerably cheaer per therm than coal, so I use the gas furnace and save both money and trouble. (Stoking the furnace in the morning is a chore, after all. Spring Cleaning is so much simpler now that I am not burning coal. I haven't had to re-paper in years!)

I am planning for a small construction project this spring (adding another ADA full bath on the first floor) and so have been pricing roll-off dumpsters. A 30 yard roll-off will cost $925 for two weeks, with a $26.00 per day charge after the first 14. This is more than three times the cost of a similar dumpster in Cleveland OH, Charlottesville VA or Lansing MI. For all that we have two large landfills in our county. Both of them are, of course operated by the one waste company which holds the monopoly. The waste from Lansing, Clevealnd, and part of Ontario, Canada, is dumped there, but county residents must go through the retail transfer stations.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My only real concern about urban composting is that it might attract vermin -- rodents especially. Seattle, for instance, is just thick with rats as it is (don't mention that to anyone from the Convention and Visitors Bureau).

We do have a lot of creatures living in the junkyard, but the raccoons and the owls keep the rats and mice under control -- it's a balanced little ecosystem out there. In the seventeen years I've lived in this house, I've never had a single visit from an uninvited rodent.

 

[2jakes]

We do have a lot of creatures living in the junkyard, but the raccoons and the owls keep the rats and mice under control -- it's a balanced little ecosystem out there. In the seventeen years I've lived in this house, I've never had a single visit from an uninvited rodent.

I usually find a dead uninvited rodent in the kitchen back door steps.
Compliments of Polo.
He feels he is doing his share as "food provider".

Afterwards, he struts around with a puffed chest.
I don't have the heart to tell him I already have enough
food in the pantry.

 

[sheeplady]

So what have you done with the tires - just left them on the property I'm guessing?

For now. We have one set on rims (those are $50 to turn in) and I've been eyeing that set for a wagon, but my husband says no, they are too worn. I shoved the four of them with rims over a woodchuck hole and the thing flipped them out...

I hauled 8 of them to the front of the property when I was pregnant with my son, hoping for "free tire day." Didn't happen.

Considered taking then 2 towns over (to the next county, as they charge $15), but they require you to show proof you live there. (Understandable.)

I'm thinking strawberry planters. And as HudsonHawk says, tire swings.

 

[1955mercury]

Around here, it's common to use tires for landfill. There's a playground on my street that was built on the site of a neighborhood school that burned down in the sixties, and they filled in and built up the site with hundreds and hundreds of old tires. Now, the soil is eroding off due to the slope of the street, and the lot is pocked with tires poking up thru the surface. Kids never use that playground anymore, but if they did they could play a "bounce from tire to tire" game.

I worked in the tire manufacturing business for 30 years and you can't keep a tire buried in a landfill. It will eventually rise to the surface.

 

[sheeplady]

It's all in the marketing!

Option #1
Put a "garage sale" sign on the front yard.
Mark the tires as "vintage" with a high price tag.
Next, tape a label on the tires that says "Hold".
Folks cannot resist this.

Option #2
Ship them to Lizzie.
She autographs them.

They'll be gone in no time!

Haha. I wish. The neighbor tried something similar... she put a sign with $30 on them by the side of the road... when they didn't sell she put "free."

No takers.

There is a place up in the hills there that will give you money (like $20) for an old appliance, but you need AWD on those washed out rock roads and my husband won't let me go up there by myself because the female neighbor (native, but not really a local*) won't go by herself. Besides, they don't take tires. But they will get our old fridge.

*she's never been to the local watering hole, and was suprised I wanted to try it because she didnt think it was "our" taste.

 

[tonyb]

Well I restore and repair antique radios and phonographs for a living. This involves parting out many sets, and so I have a larger waste stream than some. I used to burn surplus cabinets in the coal furnace, but over the last six years of so natural gas is considerably cheaer per therm than coal, so I use the gas furnace and save both money and trouble. (Stoking the furnace in the morning is a chore, after all. Spring Cleaning is so much simpler now that I am not burning coal. I haven't had to re-paper in years!)

I am planning for a small construction project this spring (adding another ADA full bath on the first floor) and so have been pricing roll-off dumpsters. A 30 yard roll-off will cost $925 for two weeks, with a $26.00 per day charge after the first 14. This is more than three times the cost of a similar dumpster in Cleveland OH, Charlottesville VA or Lansing MI. For all that we have two large landfills in our county. Both of them are, of course operated by the one waste company which holds the monopoly. The waste from Lansing, Clevealnd, and part of Ontario, Canada, is dumped there, but county residents must go through the retail transfer stations.

Do I recall you mentioning at one time or another that you are also something of an innkeeper? A B&B or something along those lines?

If so, and if the ADA compliant bathroom is to accommodate guests needing such a facility, I applaud you.

As to burning wood and/or coal ...

Yeah, it's a lot more effort than turning a thermostat. I burned lots of wood -- scrap lumber, old pallets, and even genuine fir and alder firewood on occasion -- for several years, Had a little green enamel Jotul that would heat that entire little house I lived in then. My since deceased brother burned wood and coal -- that soft Western variety -- in a Godin. The fallout from that thing was plainly visible on fresh snow. I doubt that such a stove is legal in the city anymore.

 

[vitanola]

Not any longer. We have not operated the house as an inn since the BH and I began caring for my mom and dad after my mother's fall in 2011.

I am just getting an appropriate bathroom so that I can bring my parents to our home, rather than continuing to commute between our home and my parents in Cleveland. We put 72,603 miles on the car last year. My dad has finally consented to the move, at least for the moment.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
This past summer a shirt-tail relative, a fellow who has had a stroke or three and truly is disabled by that, was set to move into the basement apartment here at the place we bought in autumn of '15. But he backed out at the last minute. Seems he couldn't pull himself away from his woman friend, with whom he has had a stormy relationship, and who has since been diagnosed with lung cancer. So he may be coming this way yet, seeing how her prognosis is somewhere between poor and dismal.

So here I had this 16-foot truck mostly full of furniture and other stuff I had left back in the Seattle area, in a duplex we finally put on the market, after selling another place back there the year before. It cost about as much to move that stuff as it would have to just replace it all here in the Denver area, but I wished to move his stuff as well. And some of that swag of mine, while not particularly valuable in an economic sense, held some sentimental value.

So I put the basement unit on Airbnb. So far, so good. I don't wish to have anyone other than family or close friends down there on a permanent basis anyway.

We had a remo on our upstairs bathroom this past April. It's now ADA compliant. And it looks a lot better too. It now has two entries -- the existing one off the hallway, and one off the master bedroom.

 

[vitanola]

Well, when we renovated the place in Michigan back in 2001-03 I reconfigured the bedroom spaces upstairs so that five of the six bedrooms have a simple en-suite bathroom.

Downstairs we currently have two half-baths and a laundry room. I have now turned our original dining room into a bedroom for Mom and Dad. We have moved the dining room furniture into the second parlor, and will be demolishing the half bath which is currently off of that original dining room (along with its adjacent laundry room) to create the new full bathroom space. I think that it should be comfortable arrangement, and will leave a first floor living space for our future use should we be lucky enough to reach old age ourselves.

We determined that a residential elevator would actually be a simpler, less costly option, for when we renovated I designed a pair of aligned closets for a just such a future elevator installation, but Dad was uncomfortable with the idea, so we have dropped it for the time being.

 

[tonyb]

Well, when we renovated the place in Michigan back in 2001-03 I reconfigured the bedroom spaces upstairs so that five of the six bedrooms have a simple en-suite bathroom.

Downstairs we currently have two half-baths and a laundry room. I have now turned our original dining room into a bedroom for Mom and Dad. We have moved the dining room furniture into the second parlor, and will be demolishing the half bath which is currently off of that original dining room (along with its adjacent laundry room) to create the new full bathroom space. I think that it should be comfortable arrangement, and will leave a first floor living space for our future use should we be lucky enough to reach old age ourselves.

We determined that a residential elevator would actually be a simpler, less costly option, for when we renovated I designed a pair of aligned closets for a just such a future elevator installation, but Dad was uncomfortable with the idea, so we have dropped it for the time being.

Good God, man! How large is that place?

I was surprised by how "affordable" (there's gotta be a better word) those home elevators are. Not that they're inexpensive, but not so pricey as to put them out of consideration.

 

[Trenchfriend]

If you are going home, carrying groceries the old-fashion way and got additional a bundle of Bananas (with 8 pieces) in your bag, they really got their weight!

 

[vitanola]

Good God, man! How large is that place?

I was surprised by how "affordable" (there's gotta be a better word) those home elevators are. Not that they're inexpensive, but not so pricey as to put them out of consideration.

Just over 5000 square feet. The house was built (about fifteen years after our village was settled) by the fellow who owned the Lumber and Flouring mills on the river. Of course he lost the house and the mills to the bank after the "Crime of '73"... There is more than a little bit of "frontier carpentry" in this outwardly impressive house.

A few years ago, during the late housing crisis, I purchased a charming little Craftsman Bungalow out of foreclosure. I subsequently have renovated that cottage. We had intended to move to the smaller house and turn the big house into rental property, but the Bungalow is not suited to folks with limited mobility, so it appears that for the time being we will be staying put here in our brick mausoleum. Needless to say, real estate is incredibly inexpensive in our part of the country.