#278 Putting garbage in other garbage

Neil Pasricha

In your car you used to have all this lying around: an empty Doritos bag, a napkin, a parking stub, and a coffee cup.

Now you just have a coffee cup.

AWESOME!

Photo from: here

60 thoughts to “#278 Putting garbage in other garbage”

  1. I love doing this!

    I am notorious for “pre-bussing” my table at a restaurant, too, thanks to many friends in the food industry over the years. I love combining all the trash into a neat and efficient little package.

    I was even into doing this as an elementary-aged child; I’d rip open my empty milk carton, fill it full of trash, and never have to worry about rogue napkins and wrappers flying off on the long walk to the trash can.

    1. when I was in grammar, I would stuff everything into the potato chips bag! or roll everything into whatever foil/plastic my lunch came in, and then stuff it into the potato chips bag lol!

    2. Yes! The empty milk-carton is the best for stuffing garbage into – you can even fold it back closed again. SECRET garbage.

      I also love doing this during air travel. Just handing one compact little cup of trash to the flight attendant is very satisfying for everyone!

      1. Secret garbage!! That was my favorite too. I still do that with car garbage and in my home. Awesome!

      2. jdurley – as has been commented on in the blog comments here previously, I thought milk in Canada only came in bags?? How do you stuff garbage into your milk bag??

        1. Here in Canada milk comes in bags cartons and plastic bottles. All depends on the size of the carton if you go to macs you can get a one litre plastic jug of milk or a 4 litre jug of milk. You can also get it in cartons ranging from 250 mls to 2 litters. There are 4 litre bags of milk which have three individually packed bags

    3. Speaking of car garbage, too bad you never stuffed that full, melted & rotting Ben & Jerry’s carton into anything and threw all of that out together, huh Laura??

      :)

      1. Hey now! I am the one with the immaculately clean car — it was my friend who left a half-eaten pint of B&J in her trunk from November to February!! It’s ok — I’m sure the gross factor of that scenario is what has confused the details for you.

        Or maybe you really remembered but are upset by your burgeoning reputation as an STD-obsessed blog commenter and are attempting to give me a bad name as well.

        1. lol.. you caught me..

          “yeah, yeah.. I know I always talk about someone having the syph, but I swear I’m not the weird one.. it’s Laura! She keeps rotting ice cream in her trunk.. let’s all ridicule her, and leave me and my clamydia obsession alone! Boo Laura and her dirty car!!”

            1. All cheek and no play make Freddo a cheeky boy..

              It was the best of times, it was the cheekiest of times..

              To cheek or not to cheek, that is the question..

              Cheek is a many splendored thing…

              I cheek, therefore I am (aka: Cheekito ergo sum)

              1. Oh wow! This thread had me in tears from laughing so hard. I don’t even have a proper comment. That’s what I get for being so late to the game!

  3. Wonderful! That is me all the way. Doing it all the time. Try stuffing a straw, potato chip bag, and napkin into a bottle before throwing it away! (never mind the implications on recycling.

  4. So you kept the coffee cup (as it was still full), and discarded the other things.

    1. Those are some of the best ones — mundane or ordinary things that you never realized you thought were awesome!

            1. My first thought on seeing that pick was that Darkwing duck does have some kind of creepy resemblance to Snidely. Oh great, now if I start having nightmares about ducks tying me to railroad tracks, I might have to join the anti-duck crusade.

  6. Oooh I love this, cause I’m great at letting little bits of garbage pile up without realizing it. So when I do notice all the wrappers and whatnots, even if I can’t throw the stuff out right away, there’s just something about having only a few pieces of garbage instead of a bunch that makes me feel sooo much neater and efficient lol

  8. If my car is a mess, there’s usually a plastic bag in there somewhere to throw everything in. It almost never fails. You just reminded me….I REALLY need to clean my car out.
    Putting trash in other trash is such a time saver.

  10. When the new “bag” of TP enters the house, I unpack it like the gift it truly is, stack it within reach of “the duties” so all who visit a throne are never left in a “sphincter pinch” to find some; a need to holla’ out, or left to their own device. Then ’round the house I go, filling “the bag” with the unrecyclables from washroom waste baskets, home office trash can, the book nook/den/ grand-children’s bunker- telescopic star gazer tower; laundry room dryer leftovers, and any other odds and sodds I can find around the house. I then tie 2 bows with corners to close and feel gratitude for the affordability of every nook and cranny; to have a day of ability to do and see each and every aspect of the trash in trash quest, I smile, This is a good day… I smile!

  11. My favorite is when I have an empty one of those little snacky Doritos bags and an empty regular big Doritos bag I can use to trash it.

    Doesn’t happen often, but when it does it’s awesome.

  12. Hi, my name is Anaíta, I am Brazilian and I just read your story in the magazine Selections, I’ll comment on it in Portuguese, because it might be more fun as well, is not it?
    Achei muito interessante a idéia… sempre tive esse pensamento, de que tudo, até mesmo as coisas simples são tão mágicas.
    Adorei, meus parabéns. Espero poder ver seu livro aqui no Brasil.

    Abraços

    AWESOME!

  15. I love this! A few days ago, I threw away a toilet paper tube (standing on end, as always). Ever since, I’ve been stuffing tissues and whatnot into it, and each time I silently give a little cheer of “woo! free space!” ;)

  16. Having those twenty minutes to spare that aren’t long enough to dive into any real work, but ARE long enough to read through seven or eight of Neil’s posts from before you followed him…

    AWESOME!

  17. here in Canada we have these.. mini chocolates. Nestle’s Favourites . small wrappers , a mix of 4 different kinds one of them being smarties.. which are very similiar to M & M’s but they come in a little carboard box… best thing about the box.. it hides all the wrappers from all the little chocolates you ate so no one sees it.. and keeps your area neat and tidy LOL

    1. Halloween-sized treats! Eating a whole handful of them, but hiding the other wrappers inside of the mini-Smarties box! MORE secret garbage! Oh yeah!

        1. Weird – when I first clicked on your link, it didn’t take me to the image, but redirected me to the glambamm.com homepages, which appears to just show a long series of photos of Justin Bieber working out at a gym..

          I thought I’d been Bieber-Roll’d!!!

  18. You know what’s even more awesome? Recycling. Or not even producing refuse at all!

  19. oh my god this is so funny! haha i do feel a little something when i combine three garbage bags to make one on the way out of my apartment. i just never knew that that little something i was feeling was “awesome”.

    also a friend of mine said he became scared to put garbage in my garbage because one time he took a huge food (to go) container and put it in my little garbage and i took it out and said “that doesn’t go in there” haha, the garbage doesn’t go in the garbage??! no. that’s not true.

    what is true is that volume and spatially speaking things that are going to not going to make any sense being in the garbage don’t belong in there. my roommate use to throw shoe boxes in the garbage. all that empty space inside the shoe box? not awesome.

    crumpling up an orange juice or milk carton by opening it all the way up and squeezing it at the creases… now THAT is awesome.

  22. I hate to rain on this parade, or be a grammar Nazi, but the correct word in most cases is really trash. Garbage is what used to be food, or part of food. Trash is the non-edible stuff like cans, boxes, tissues, etc. I know it shouldn’t bug me this much, but it’s like hearing people call cars trucks, or ducks geese.

    1. Really? I thought it was just a cultural thing, like Americans say “trash”, Canadians say “garbage” and Brits say “rubbish”.

      Aussies! Please weigh in! What’s your preferred term?

      1. Barbara – interesting point.. a quick run-through of a half-dozen internet dictionaries seems to indicate that there is definitely an element to the word that is specific to “food waste”. (I had no idea about this specific definition)

        However, every dictionary I checked also provided a definition listing garbage as “any matter that is no longer wanted or needed; trash” or something similar. So, there is definitely a very acceptable use of the word garbage as Neil is employing it here.

        But I always think this topic is really interesting – the evolution of language. And what do we do when a word has adopted a common usage or meaning that differs from its original definition. If everyone is using the same word to mean the same thing, is it really incorrect if it changed from its original meaning? There’s a GREAT show on Saturday’s on NPR called “A Way With Words”, and they address all sorts of these types of questions.. highly recommended!

          1. *pushes glasses up on nose*

            It’s interesting that you bring that up, jdurley, as they recently discussed the differences between Nerd, Geek and similar terms on A Way With Words, and I believe that you’ll find that depending on someone’s opinion, I may be a Geek, a Nerd or a Dweeb, but I am most definitely not a Dork.. :)

            Please consult this handy venn diagram for future reference!
            http://nerdapproved.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Nerd_Dork_Geek_Venn_Diagram.jpg

            1. That is quite the handy venn diagram. Thanks for posting. I can now refer my friends to it when they call me a dork.

  23. oh yeah. I can remember from halloween, my little brother and sister gave me thier unwanted candy. the wrappers would have made a mess but I was able to stuff them all into an empty mccaffee cup on my desk. :P

  24. I used to do this in school, and sometimes I still do, but the teachers yell at me for not recycling. The best part, though, is when there is a trash can within throwing distance and you ake the perfect shot.

  25. Every year Tim Horton’s Roll up the Rim happens…I use the winner (after I tear the winning tab off) or losing (please play again) roll up cup for my garbage…breakfast sandwich wrapper, napkins, used ketchup container…it all gets stuffed into the paper coffee cup, the lid replaced and into the garbage it goes…really neat and awesome little package…

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