Christmas Gift Trash. Am I the only one?

Tell your wife that she should be happy you don't make her take out the trash.

She should appreciate you getting rid of everything.

I for one will be up late shredding all the boxes piece by piece.

When the new moon comes around I will take it all and hide it bags, and bags of shreddings in my truck.

Later on, without my cell phone and with my On Star fuse removed, I will dump it in the deep in the woods and a few other places.

That is why you need a cross cut shredder that makes micro cuts for NSA quality security.
 
My wife just got finished busting my balls about how I handle the Christmas gift trash in our house and I was wondering if I am the only one. This goes back multiple decades ago when I was taking the rattler to work while reading the Herald (before the format change). The front page story was about thieves targeting houses by the quality of their trash after Christmas. Thieves were cruising neighborhoods looking for high dollar TV and electronic boxes in the trash. Since that story, I have always taken any expensive electronic or firearm related boxes and toss them in the work dumpster instead of putting them to the curb. The trunk is full and I will take care of it Mon. morning. I can't be the only one who does this.
Interesting, we have to drive all boxes to recycling center on weekends, trash truck does not pick them up and nor recycling truck neither. Go figure, some people still just have a right to throw away their trash...
 
My wife just got finished busting my balls about how I handle the Christmas gift trash in our house and I was wondering if I am the only one. This goes back multiple decades ago when I was taking the rattler to work while reading the Herald (before the format change). The front page story was about thieves targeting houses by the quality of their trash after Christmas. Thieves were cruising neighborhoods looking for high dollar TV and electronic boxes in the trash. Since that story, I have always taken any expensive electronic or firearm related boxes and toss them in the work dumpster instead of putting them to the curb. The trunk is full and I will take care of it Mon. morning. I can't be the only one who does this.
People go through road side trash looking for what ever. Im sure the pro thieves can read a house pretty well with out going through the trash
 
I cut up cardboard.

With my son being our first child and the first grandchild plus COVID we were getting Amazon packages every day for what felt like months with baby shower gifts. I felt like I cut up cardboard for a week straight.

Reading some of these posts it sounds like I need a burn barrel.
 
Tell your wife that she should be happy you don't make her take out the trash.

She should appreciate you getting rid of everything.

I for one will be up late shredding all the boxes piece by piece.

When the new moon comes around I will take it all and hide it bags, and bags of shreddings in my truck.

Later on, without my cell phone and with my On Star fuse removed, I will dump it in the deep in the woods and a few other places.

That is why you need a cross cut shredder that makes micro cuts for NSA quality security.
Nsa quality? Like Snowden? [smile]
 
I cut up cardboard.

With my son being our first child and the first grandchild plus COVID we were getting Amazon packages every day for what felt like months with baby shower gifts. I felt like I cut up cardboard for a week straight.

Reading some of these posts it sounds like I need a burn barrel.
Depending on your location, keep a hotdog handy when burning. "It's a cooking fire"
 
I do not think thieves care about TVs these days.
Maybe a PS5 box might but I think most keep those boxes at least for a year or so
I would assume most home break ins around here are targeted for different reasons (drugs, cash, etc)
Can always put the expensive boxes out at the neighbors trash ;)
 
All the wrapping paper gets stuffed into a trash bag, cardboard gets ripped apart and jammed into several cardboard boxes. The tally for this AM was 1 large trash bag and 3 medium sized cardboard boxes.

2 bags (incl household stuff since Th) and 3 medium boxes. Beat the rush at the dump when they opened this morning. Just me and the other obsessive lunatics, but the line was forming by the time I was leaving.

Speaking of obsessive lunatics, is there anything better than a nice stout medium sized cardboard box with high sides that you can stuff with other broken down cardboard boxes? Is there anything worse than those low amazon boxes where the flaps are too long to fold inside?
 
Last edited:
No curbside pick up in my town. We have a transfer station.

Same here. But the wife still insists that we cut-out the shipping name & address part of the boxes and we burn those pieces in the wood stove.

... Look at all the wealthy elite members here with trash service right at their curbside. Must be nice.
(most likely, they also have their tuxedo wearing servants with white gloves haul the trash to the curb for them too ...)

[grin]
 
Last edited:
Not sure what the issues here are regarding trash. The most concern we have about it is that Monday for us is a recycle day and we cn get rid of all the wrappings and cardboard accumulated this week.

We have bins. Haven't had an issue of people nosing through my trash but 2020 has been a very strange year so nothing would surprise me now.

Anything that doesn't fit it he recycle bin get sliced up and put in a yard waste bag. Trash guy is really cool about it. He will take recycling in a yard waste bag.

But, nobody in the house got any big ticket items. I do need a new TV for the first floor but I will get that later, maybe during the toilet bowl sale. I won't be watching but I will surely take advantage of any sales that they use for advertising.

But kids are older so mostly crap for college for my oldest and clothes for my youngest. We're at that stage where just about everything was a usable wearable item.
 
Any big cardboard boxes for like TV's and electronics I cut into squares and rectangle and use for backing at the range for targets. After I shoot them full of holes I throw them out at the range.

I also make sure sure there are no NRA, SIG, Glock etc stickers on any of our vehicles. Can't be too safe....
 
NES is getting soft.

I put a note on the box with my address, drive to Lowell and drop them there.

I sit at home smoking a cigar, ready with my rifle and bayonet and wait.
 
We have curbside pick up. I still buy a dump sticker too. That’s where I take the larger or expensive item boxes. Since we live a postage stamp neighborhood that’s also where the grass, leaves and brush go.
The dump sticker is also good for the town beach so there is that too.
 
Your town charges you for the privilege of dumping your own trash?? Wow.
Annual sticker or collection fees + per bag fees are very common now. It's an end-run around proposition 2 1/2 moving items off of property tax funded to fee for service. Ditto for school bus, parking and sports fees. Given the choice between taking a hard line on employee expenses or plucking the taxpayer like a chicken, the later will always be chosen.

The fixed + incremental pricing is known as "two part pricing" and is designed to minimize consumer surplus (the difference between what the consumer is willing to pay and what the consumer does pay). This is similar to "diners surplus" which is the difference between what one can consume and at all you can eat buffet and what one does consume.

Two-part tariff - Wikipedia describes it nicely:

A[1] two-part tariff (TPT) is a form of price discrimination wherein the price of a product or service is composed of two parts - a lump-sum fee as well as a per-unit charge.[2][3] In general, such a pricing technique only occurs in partially or fully monopolistic markets. It is designed to enable the firm to capture more consumer surplus than it otherwise would in a non-discriminating pricing environment.
 
Back
Top Bottom