A Tiny, Brilliant Trick to Make Trash Day Easier
Taking out the garbage is such a pain in the butt. If you do it before the bag is totally full, it feels like a waste, but if you wait until you’ve packed it down a few times and it’s full to the brim, it’s an even harder job. For one, it’s stinky. Also, it’s heavy! And then there’s this pesky thing called suction, which sucks the bag into the can and requires superhuman strength to slowly yank it out.
Dan Marshall, author of Tidy Hacks: Handy Hints to Make Life Easier, had this problem. And now he has a solution, which he features in the book.
First, get out your power drill. (If you don’t have a power drill, we recommend getting one — for this little hack and just to have on hand. It’ll be more useful than you even know.) Add a medium-sized drill bit, then drill two small holes into your trash can on the side, near the bottom.
Buy the book: Tidy Hacks: Handy Hints to Make Life Easier, $16
The book shows doing this in the front of a plastic trash can, but I would probably opt for the back for aesthetic purposes. If you have a fancier metal trash can, like I do, just do this to the plastic liner that slides inside the can. What these little holes do is create just enough air flow so that there’s no vacuum effect. You can pull your bag right out! (Assuming it’s not so full of trash that you actually can’t lift it). And the holes are small enough that critters like mice still won’t be able to get in there.
More Dirt on Trash
Smart, huh? Have any of you tried this at home?