A Room and a Closet

 A couple of upsizing, downsizing observations since moving to the city.

I am used to weekly trash pick-up days when I would roll my big carts (one for "regular" trash and one for recycled items) down the driveway, then wait for the big smelly, loud garbage trucks to come by and whisk it way. Not any more. I don't have trash anymore. I have rubbish. How very Uptown.

That's not saying that NYC does not have trash trucks. They do. I just don't do the curbside thing anymore.  I use the Trash Room. That's right. I don't have a trash can, I have a trash room. That's where my rubbish goes.

The Trash Room is my next door neighbor. To some that might sound awful as you imagine a room where everyone tosses in a bag of trash, the smells permeating out as you wait for a semi-weekly pickup. No, these people have this all figured out.

In the small (very small) Trash Room there are receptacles for paper recycling, plastic recycling, and rubbish. The recycle receptacles are cleaned out not once, but twice daily.  I read The Times and it goes to the paper recycling. I finish up a bottle of detergent, into the plastic recycling it goes. My house was never this clean of daily debris. But what I really like is the rubbish chute.

The rubbish chute reminds me of the laundry chute we had in my childhood home. From my second floor bedroom I could open up a lid built into a wooden shelf and expose a chute that went all the way to the basement. Into that I could toss all my soiled clothes where they would end up in a heap on the basement floor next to the washing machine. There was also a small door in the kitchen that accessed the same chute and I can't tell you how many times we used it to yell upstairs or downstairs for someone to come to a meal or stick our heads in the kitchen chute and play chicken while someone upstairs threw something other than clothes down to the basement. But, back to my rubbish chute. I can collect any amount of rubbish I want during the day and take five steps to the rubbish chute and it is gone. Way gone. Down 25 stories to the building's basement.  No muss, no fuss. Which is great considering our apartment, like most others in the city, does not have a garbage disposal.


So my trash can has been upsized to a room and my laundry room has been downsized to a laundry closet.

Turns out that works out just fine.  I always wanted my laundry to be close to my bedroom. Now it's right outside the bedroom AND the bathroom. Well, if you want to get technical it's also right next to the kitchen and living room too. 

I'm growing to like this downsized living. And that's not rubbish!