Growing up in unincorporated Fresno where your nearest neighbor was five miles away, it was a prerequisite to have a hound dog. Mine was a coonhound named Major. I loved him. In addition to knowing not to potty in the house, how to walk on a leash and some tricks, he also inherently knew how to piss off my mother.
One of Major’s greatest moments came at Thanksgiving. My mother put our steaming hot roasted turkey on the counter and walked into the family room to let my father know it was time to carve. At that instant, a crash came from the kitchen. We ran as if that clatter was the starting pistol for an Olympic event, but it was too late. Major ate the turkey. Not just part of the turkey, the entire turkey less one drumstick. My Italian mother screamed like she had witnessed a murder and put Major outside.
Even without the turkey, there was so much food it was hard to even miss the bird. Regardless, Major was banished from the kitchen during holiday meal prep for the rest of his life.
As we enter this holiday season, I think of Major and how much food there is. Even with all of us doing our best to consume a week’s worth of calories in one sitting, there is much that is left over and ultimately tossed out as its editable-ness wains. Combine the carcasses, scraps and burnt pies with the epic consumerism that starts on Black Friday, and then multiply it by the number of units at our properties, and it explains why our trash enclosures look like bombs went off during the holidays.
I highly recommend adding extra trash pick-ups to your waste hauler schedule for the holidays. Also add a note to your calendar for the second week of January to call the haulers to reduce your schedule back to normal services.
We tend to forget that there is a seasonality to trash. The amount of service we need is affected by our leasing season and by the holiday season. We need to get better at scaling our service for these events. Often, trash services are treated as “set it and forget it”, which leads to periods where you are paying for more service than you need. A good rule of thumb is to walk your trash enclosures next week. If they look decent, then keep your service as it is and put in a calendar reminder to reevaluate in mid-January. I personally like putting these walks on my calendar as annual recurring events. That way I have reminders to reevaluate, and I do not risk a hazardous enclosure or overpaying in the new year.
