So we have a dumpster in our driveway.

While I am NOT a hoarder (for real. I’m not.), sometimes, if you are an admirer of trash-day roadside treasures, or a regular at The Salvation Army Store like I tend to be, you collect things. Lots of things. Things that you intend to somehow Macgyver, or just make better and/or cuter. Very few of the furnishings in this house were purchased brand new and I’m fairly crafty. I love finding solid stuff, bettering it, and incorporating it into my home. It’s very “satisfying” (Jeff LOVES this word) to know you’ve saved a thing from the dump or that you’re storing your batteries in somebody’s great-aunt’s fantastic old hutch. Often, however, a project doesn’t work out and you need to rid yourself of whatever piece of furniture you have failed. Those things live in the garage.

But also, maybe long ago, your mother gifted to you two sofa tables that you, in turn, spilled water on so many times they’re ruined, and which, for a moment, you considered fixing because “They are SOLID MAHOGANY and purchased by MY Grandmother Phillips in the forties and, you know, they sat in YOUR Grandma Fogarty’s living room ALL YOUR LIFE, surely you can hang onto them, Anne Michelle.” but then, you give up, then BEAT YOURSELF UP like the good child you are, as you carry them to the garage.

And, you have these four kids, see, and they accumulate gobs and GOBS of CRAP, y’all, and it lives on your floor and in your every nook and cranny and maybe your Honey gets so sick of all the crap (and your griping about the crap) that he one day, out of the blue, SNAPS and takes contractor bags upstairs, shovels said crap into the bags, walks the bags to the street, THEN wakes the ever sleeping (adult) children with the good word of their newly cleaned rooms! Well. Then…. when the children realize your Honey wasn’t bluffing, their borrowed-from-the-school tuxedo, their history homework, their hundreds-of-dollars-of-makeup really ARE in a trash bag ON THE CURB, they drag those stupid trash bags full of all that crap into the garage.

And then… maybe you order lots of toilet paper and paper towels from amazon.com and you have 500 giant boxes that need to be broken down hanging out, where? In. The. Garage.

PLUS, if that garage happens to be in the path between the trash barrels and the kitchen and if your teenagers tend to be very sensitive to rain, cold, heat, working, lifting, walking or being awake like mine, you might have 20 random, half full bags of trash sitting in that same SAD and tragic garage.

ANDDD THENNNN….. what if the salvaged bags full of floor crap have to be opened and searched for the tux, homework, makeup, and the children VOMIT said bags ATOP all the MacGyver, mahogany, hutch, boxes, bags?

Well, you say, “Baby, get me a dumpster!”

This in itself is a pretty good story.

BUT.

If there’s a dumpster in your driveway, your sensitive teenagers may overlook the everyday trash barrels. The barrels that contain trash. And that have taken on massive amounts of rain water because you live in Oklahoma and because sensitive teenagers can’t be bothered to shut lids. And THEN maybe that trash/water combo sat unattended for the several weeks of the dumpster’s presence and all the bugs in Oklahoma came to play, dance, gamble, rodeo, hula, crap all their crap, lay all their babies and then feast upon it.

And you clean it.

You cleaned it because you knew that you would then clean YOURSELF, the drive way, the yard, the barrel, the contents thereof and the twenty feet surrounding all those things while maybe teenagers, sensitive as they are, might not.

Your flip flops are now also in the dumpster. You wish you could justify burning your cute striped yoga pants. You wash your hair three times. You scoff at the thought of dinner. You find your laptop because this is gold.