Simple Pleasures

Has this ever happened to you...

Your significant other returns from the grocery store and when you meet him outside to help unload the car he says,

"Guess what I found at the store today? Something we've been wishing we had for months."
"You didn't!"
"I did! Open the hatch and see for yourself."

I open the hatch to see the biggest, most beautiful kitchen garbage can I have seen since we left the States. I literally hugged my boyfriend in the garage while giggling like a kid who just got tickets to the circus.

If you haven't had the opportunity to live in a foreign country, you may not know the joy that a full sized garbage can will bring to your heart. Allow me to explain.

For the first 5 months of our life in Georgia we have been making due with a kitchen garbage can that had a flip top lid with foot pedal action. This would have been fine, except each time you put your foot on the pedal you push the can a little bit farther into the corner so that eventually the lid only flips up 1/3 of the way before the sides of the lid hit the wall.



This too would have been a minor issue if we could have simply reached out and lifted the lid by hand. Unfortunately the garbage can stands about 2 ft. off the ground so we were perpetually leaning over, one foot on the pedal, right elbow propping the lid up a little farther while trying to peel a carrot, cucumber or potato.

Even this would have been manageable if we could have found a garbage bag that would actually fit tightly around the lip of the can. Instead we had to settle for bags that we could only secure around half of the lip, leaving the back half of the can exposed and, invariably, this is where the carrot peel and cucumber guts would end up.

Unfortunately the line of sight to this can, with it's 1/3 open lid and 2 ft. off the ground height, was such that we couldn't actually see that the carrot peels and cucumber guts were missing the bag. It wasn't until a slight odor began to develop that we would realize our error in aim.

All of this would have been tolerable if the can could hold more than a gallon of garbage. As it is we were taking little bags of food waste down 4 flights of stairs to the garbage can outside every day.

Enter the new kitchen garbage can.



Last night, while preparing dinner, Seth walked over to the garbage can with a cutting board of pepper guts and onion peels, slid them easily (and accurately!) into the bag, closed the lid, looked at me from a standing position (instead of stooped over) and said,

"Man, this is nice."

If you find that you are taking the small conveniences of daily life for granted (like the perfect garbage can, light switches on the inside of the room and toilets that flush with a handle) consider an international move or simply a visit with us in Georgia.

Epilogue: The original garbage can has been relocated to the laundry room where it will continue to scoot its way into a corner and mock our attempts to collect drier lint.