Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Trash Can Redux

After hosing down the trash can multiple times, using vinegar and baking soda, and bleach twice, there is still a lingering smell of decomp on my trash can! Luckily my trash can is broken, so I am working on getting the city to get us a replacement one. The good news is that it isn't nearly as potent as it was, and I really think if I give it a peppermint oiling I could get rid of the smell for good. I just haven't gotten the peppermint oil upstairs yet. I will probably do that Thursday, so after trash pickup Friday I'll give it a whirl and see what happens. No maggots have returned.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Why I Googled "There is Decomp In My Trash Can"

I am probably on some government watch list somewhere due to my Google history. And it's my own fault. I bought too much meat at the store and needed to clear some room in the deep freezer, so I went thru it and tossed anything that had a date of several years ago on it, or looked freezer burnt. This included lots of meat. Unfortunately, this was on a Friday afternoon, and trash pickup is Friday morning. By Tuesday the garbage can reeked. It practically had wavy stench lines above it, so I moved it out to the curb so we wouldn't have to smell it when opening the garage door. By Thursday you could smell it from the street. On Friday, after trash pick up, I went out to deal with it, figuring I would hose it down with some soap and water and it would be fine. Alas, there were maggots crawling all over the inside of the can, and at the bottom was some sort of gray sludgy mess that was teaming with disgusting little critters. After dry heaving, I went back inside and started Googling. Due to my years of watching crime shows, I recognized the smell of decomp, and I knew that's why there was an infestation of maggots in my trash can. I was also pretty certain bleach would take care of the problem, but I wanted to double check. So I googled "There is Decomp in my trash can" and discovered that I am not alone in my stupidity, and that there is a whole town dealing with this issue because their trash pickup went to bi-weekly rather than weekly. Gross. After doing about five minutes of research, as I had one hour before I had to get to a PTA meeting, two hours before I had to go to a parents day at my kids day camp, and three hours before leaving for camping, I went out and hosed down the can, enough to get all the maggoty critters into the bottom. I then added what bleach we had, which wasn't much, in order to kill the little grimy critters. Then I dry heaved some more, went inside and showered. Then I basically had a break down because I didn't have time to deal with this mess, and my husband volunteered to deal with the can. So off I went to shower, and he rinsed out the can, dumping the maggoty mess into the gutter on the advice of the neighbor. He said the can no longer smelled. I went out and smelled it, dry heaved some more, and went off to my meeting, had a panic attack, came home and discovered the can still stunk. I then dumped four boxes of baking soda (3 from the fridge and freezer and one new one from the pantry) into the can, hauled it out to the curb so the neighbors didn't have to smell it, and left for day camp and camping. Three days later the can still smelled, although not as much. So I dumped a gallon of vinegar into it, making the worlds largest baking soda volcano, and let it sit for awhile. Then I rinsed it out. The smell of decomp was still there, although considerably lessened. I then dumped almost a gallon of bleach all over the trash can, and let it sit for a few hours. Alas, the decomp smell remains, although considerably lessened. At the moment I have some dryer sheets that were soaked in bleach sticking to the sides of the can, and a small cup of bleach sitting in the can, in addition to the garbage. I will see how the can smells after garbage day this week, and plan to try some peppermint essential oil to get ride of the smell. It worked the time I left raw chicken in the microwave for several months. Time will tell if we need a replacement can or not.