5 months? That's nothing in the trash world!

One of the things that I have had to get used to since we moved here is the crazy way trash is picked up. Where we lived in Texas, you could have as many trash cans and recycling bins as you wanted and the lovely sanitation department would swing by your house like clockwork twice a week to take it all away. Big items??? No problem....just set them next to your trash cans and they would magically disappear. The old vacuum that wouldn't suck anymore??? The box that the new sucking vacuum came in??? No problem, just stick 'em out there and they were gone by 5pm.

Welllllllllll, things don't quite work like that here. We are assigned three trash cans, one for trash, one for recyclables and one for yard stuff (leaves, tree branches and stuff like that), and if your trash doesn't fit in those cans, well then it just isn't going to be leaving your house. On top of that, we only have ONE trash day a week. Yes, even the week of Christmas when you have all that wrapping paper, all those boxes and all those turkey bones that you just can not stand to smell for one. more. freakin'. second.

I am trying to learn to be a cooperative Californian, but what in the world do people do when they move here and they have a house full of boxes, packing paper and bubble wrap??

Well, here is what we did. We piled the boxes in our back yard and every week we would put as many as could fit in the recycling can and then we would roll it out to the curb on Wednesday like all of the other compliant residents of this fine state.

........and, this went on for precisely 5 months!

I am happy and so proud to announce that as of this Wednesday we are officially done with our pile of boxes!!!!! After 5 ridiculous months of having to try to fold a wardrobe box into an origami swan, we have finally succeeded in getting rid of all of them.

Please, try not to be jealous of my life!