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October 24, 2025
One Trashy Woman
By Mikie Baker
The Bandera Prophet
When you live way out in the hills, you must provide yourself with water from a well, gas from a propane tank and peddling a wheel for electricity. Ok, not really on that last one.
We must have a P.O. Box that’s four miles away in town, a grocery store for when you need a Blue Bell Moo-llennium Crunch fix, and a dump where you take all your trash. If you are lucky when you go to the dump, you can score choice finds like a 30-gallon plastic bucket. Gardeners will understand.
I’m starting to have a problem lifting 39-gallon bags of trash (only a buck each at the dump) and throwing them in the back of the pick-up. I’ve decided to track it as my aerobic exercise for the week. Plus, we recycle, so there’s trash bags of plastic, tin cans, aluminum cans and two types of cardboard. I think I need a Rubbish Butler.
There’s always a price to pay for a gorgeous view of the hills.
I’ve been hauling trash to the dump since I moved to the Hill Country, so I’m used to it. What I’m not used to is My Future Husband who refers to our trash as “garbage.”
This immediately reminds me of the Shel Silverstein song, “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who would not take the garbage out.” I know, I’m weird. Anyway, I find “garbage” to be an offensive word. Trash has some Class.
To that end, I had a discussion with my friend Google and learned that there are many words other than garbage that we can use. The ones that are considered “fancy names” are refuse, rubbish, scrap and that lucky one – trash. I knew I was raised right.
There are other words for “garbage” as well – waste, debris, litter and junk. I’d go with waste as in waste basket, but the other three are more “outside around the house” words. Debris probably means dead bodies, Litter means the cat’s litter box was full and Junk just means everything is referred to as yard art.
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably thinking, “What is wrong with this woman and her obsession with trash? Does she not have a life at all?”
I blame it all on Rubbermaid.
A couple of years ago, I bought a new TRASH can. It had plastic flipper things inside the bin that you could flip up and then wrap the top of the bag around them, push them down and your trash bag was secure. It worked well until the “powers that be” decided to make the 13-gallon trash bags just a hair smaller. This led to a weekly knock down drag out with the waste bin (slipped one in there, didn’t I?) until both sides popped out of their holes and I went on the hunt for bigger kitchen trash bags. I now have four different brands. None of them work.
Two weeks ago, I decided this scrappy dance must end, so I ordered a new kitchen trash can with a removable liner so I can easily slap a trash bag on it. I received it yesterday and I was so excited that last night, I had to check on it before I went to bed. It’s like having a whole kitchen remodel.
I can hardly wait for the bag to fill up, so I can try all three of the other trash bag sizes I own. I guess it’s true that I’m a trashy woman after all.
If only I could just get My Future Husband to quit saying garbage, living out this far may not be so bad either. Now where’s the Rubbish Butler?
We must have a P.O. Box that’s four miles away in town, a grocery store for when you need a Blue Bell Moo-llennium Crunch fix, and a dump where you take all your trash. If you are lucky when you go to the dump, you can score choice finds like a 30-gallon plastic bucket. Gardeners will understand.
I’m starting to have a problem lifting 39-gallon bags of trash (only a buck each at the dump) and throwing them in the back of the pick-up. I’ve decided to track it as my aerobic exercise for the week. Plus, we recycle, so there’s trash bags of plastic, tin cans, aluminum cans and two types of cardboard. I think I need a Rubbish Butler.
There’s always a price to pay for a gorgeous view of the hills.
I’ve been hauling trash to the dump since I moved to the Hill Country, so I’m used to it. What I’m not used to is My Future Husband who refers to our trash as “garbage.”
This immediately reminds me of the Shel Silverstein song, “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who would not take the garbage out.” I know, I’m weird. Anyway, I find “garbage” to be an offensive word. Trash has some Class.
To that end, I had a discussion with my friend Google and learned that there are many words other than garbage that we can use. The ones that are considered “fancy names” are refuse, rubbish, scrap and that lucky one – trash. I knew I was raised right.
There are other words for “garbage” as well – waste, debris, litter and junk. I’d go with waste as in waste basket, but the other three are more “outside around the house” words. Debris probably means dead bodies, Litter means the cat’s litter box was full and Junk just means everything is referred to as yard art.
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably thinking, “What is wrong with this woman and her obsession with trash? Does she not have a life at all?”
I blame it all on Rubbermaid.
A couple of years ago, I bought a new TRASH can. It had plastic flipper things inside the bin that you could flip up and then wrap the top of the bag around them, push them down and your trash bag was secure. It worked well until the “powers that be” decided to make the 13-gallon trash bags just a hair smaller. This led to a weekly knock down drag out with the waste bin (slipped one in there, didn’t I?) until both sides popped out of their holes and I went on the hunt for bigger kitchen trash bags. I now have four different brands. None of them work.
Two weeks ago, I decided this scrappy dance must end, so I ordered a new kitchen trash can with a removable liner so I can easily slap a trash bag on it. I received it yesterday and I was so excited that last night, I had to check on it before I went to bed. It’s like having a whole kitchen remodel.
I can hardly wait for the bag to fill up, so I can try all three of the other trash bag sizes I own. I guess it’s true that I’m a trashy woman after all.
If only I could just get My Future Husband to quit saying garbage, living out this far may not be so bad either. Now where’s the Rubbish Butler?