With two days notice my neighbourhood was advised it was Inorganic Collection time!
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| Photo credit: http://www.wanganuireferendum.govt.nz |
For those unfamiliar with this term it’s where our local Council collect our items that are too big for the weekly rubbish pick-up… you know, things like TVs and Dryers that just wont fit into a rubbish bag! Each household puts all their inorganic rubbish on the kerbside in the weekend for the council to pick up during the following week. I’ll upload pics soon but if you can imagine, by the end the weekend outside everyone’s house is a varying sized pile of trash.
Aptly timed with Spring, my family and I had a spring clean. Miss 13 convinced me to throw out the coffee table that has followed us around thru the years and was literally on its last legs… $40 from Kmart many moons ago. So out it went. My lounge looks bigger and the girls can sprawl out on their bean bags. Out with toys, old dolls which once you couldn’t tear away from Miss 10 (eeek she’s growing up). Magazines, Prams, outdoor furniture, rusty bbq, suitcases, newspapers, a bike and the piece de résistance a Dryer. Even as I sit here writing this I can still picture stuff at home that can go.
Here’s a pic of my BBQ, you can see why it needed to go. We have a grand opening down the road by the local gardening centre and they have a competition where you email them a picture of your old crusty BBQ and you go into the draw for a new one… I’m hoping I get lucky. If I did I’d give the Rolls Royce BBQ they are giving away to my girls Granddad and I will have his… can you see the visualisation? We have people at work big on it so I even asked the girls to visualise us arriving for the draw and our name getting called out…. Anyway off topic…
I HATE about inorganic time. With it comes the scavengers. For the entire weekend the neighbourhood is inundated with trucks and vans and trailers being driven by people from out of town and they stop by each pile of trash and methodically go thru it with a fine tooth comb and load up their trucks, vans and trailers and then move onto the next pile. This is fine if it’s one or two but it’s not, it’s like a whole other neighbourhood comes in and raids your trash. You can’t drive up or down the street because it’s all blocked by these visitors.
Why do I dislike them so much? First and most important reason is if they see you dumping your rubbish they send their little kids down your driveway asking if you have more trash. The youngest child I’d estimate last year was maybe 5 or 6. This year I had kids who looked like 10 or 12. This makes me madder than the people who come knocking on your door wanting to discuss the merits of *said religious leader*. Or they just send their kids door-knocking for the hell of it.
The second reason is that they don’t leave your trash in the tidy piles they find them. They start at one end of the pile and ferret thru it much like a cartoon puppy digging the dirt and the dirt goes flying out behind them Your trash pile becomes a rubbish dump.
The third reason is that you also get the clowns who think it’s clever to break the screen of TVs etc. A lot of TVs are being thrown out at the moment because we’re going digital soon and our analogue TVs won’t work without a digital receiver and it’s cheaper to just buy a new tv. It’s not funny to go along each pile and smash tv screens. Kids walk the streets all the time and here in NZ it’s more barefoot than not.
The fourth reason is because I think it’s gross that a stranger is ferreting thru my trash. If I throw something out it’s broken, rusty or mouldy. It’s not worth anything to the average person but I guess anything metal they strip back and sell and maybe that’s how that family will eat for the week. Last year I had a truck drive past me with their back piled so so high there’s no way it could be legal or safe in form but the policeman he drove past in the round-a-bout ignored him?!?
I cant think of many good points except sometimes there’s kind groups who will be more than happy to take your heavy items up your driveway for you. I started to drag my old dryer up the driveway and the wife of the current ferreting couple came bustling and waving at me down my driveway and said her husband would come pick it up. Sure enough he did. Two days later almost everything metal is gone. My coffee table remains so I guess Miss 13 knew what she was talking about. Old towels and clothes are still there. Oddly enough the Videos (yes as in VHS Videos) are gone but the books remain.
The other surprise is that I’m ranting and raving about the scavengers and the mess they leave and Miss 10 pipes up that she LOVES Inorganic Collection because she can go hunting for new toys and baby gear. OH.MY.GOSH! What? Turns out my selective memory has totally forgotten last inorganic she collected from a neighbour a PERFECT condition baby capsule and a Childs pooh bear armchair. The armchair went out this inorganic because I refused to let it come inside and now it’s growing grass. Miss 10 went back to the house that threw out the baby capsule and there was a rocker. Where is the rocker now? Pulled apart at home waiting to be washed. It’s amazing what she can do when she wants to?!? Needless to say the skateboard with missing wheels she found has gone back along with the Skip-It and the broken Nerf Gun. I went out to find the kids last night and there they were all perched on someone’s fancy couch chatting?!? Oh one other good thing… the kids did their paper run really quickly so they could walk past other peoples trash.
So is my trash really your treasure? My BBQ has gone. My dryer has gone. All the suitcases gone. Videos gone. Bike gone. Prams gone. Only thing left is towels and my trusty coffee table. And is your trash my treasure? I don’t see anything worthwhile in a skateboard with missing wheels especially when Miss 10 has a perfectly good skateboard. Did I mentioned it was raining too?
Maybe my trash is your treasure!
