There are tasks we assume short people will have trouble with. At just about five feet tall, I have plenty of experience there. But taking out the trash was never on the list of things I expected my height to cause problems with. It probably wasn’t on your list of short-people-problems either.
About ten years ago my city bought new trash trucks. The decision saved money for the city and made it easier for us to deal with curbside recycling; and the new trucks were more environmentally friendly. Under the new system, there was no longer someone hopping on and off the truck to collect the cans. Definite safety improvement. It also meant that we were required to change our curbside trash cans. The city delivered big, tall trash cans and recycling cans on wheels. Every house got one of each.
For years, I struggled with the new trash can. Removing bags of trash is not a pleasant task to start, and with kids and cats, it can be especially gross. Bags of trash can be heavy and are always at risk of breaking. When I could purchase my own trash can, I was able to choose one that was a suitable height. Something that wasn’t too difficult to lift a heavy bag into. With the new can, I couldn’t just lift the bag by the neatly tied handles and toss it over the side of the can.
Instead, I had to lift an unwieldy, shifting mass of bagged trash over my head like an Olympic weightlifter to toss it in. The very first step, though, was to flip open the square-shaped can’s heavy, hinged lid (which is large enough that I have difficulty reaching the handle in the center) and carefully pull it open until I could rely on gravity to let it fall to the ground. Trash bags had to be filled with great precision so that they were neither too heavy nor too voluminous to lift overhead.
I got used to this new method after a while, learning to do things like changing out litter boxes on days when the trash can was also empty so that I could tip the can onto its side and put the very heavy bags in before standing the can upright again. It worked, albeit awkwardly, at least for a while. Put the bag in, use a rake or a broom handle to make sure the bag is pushed all the way to the bottom of the can, then stand the can up. And of course this could only work when the can started off totally empty–if there were other things already in there, it became nearly impossible to pick up a trash can that is so big I could basically stand up in it.
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So for a while it was okay. But then I got sick. Sick enough that I now use a walker to get around all the time, instead of occasionally using a cane, as I had previously. Sick enough that a lot of things I used to be able to do before didn’t work anymore. That all started very early into the COVID pandemic, at a time when every interaction with someone outside your bubble had to be a precisely calculated risk/benefit analysis.
So. It’s early June, 2020. I’m home from the hospital and rehab. And it’s been about a month. There’s plenty of mess to deal with–all the gross stuff in the fridge. Fortunately, a neighbor has been kind enough to feed the cats. Still, there’s a lot to deal with. I’m also supposed to be on bedrest still, and not up on my feet for more than about an hour at a time. The garbage is piling up. And even though it is difficult and tiring to get rid of it, I can’t just let it stay there.
I can’t just pick up and carry the bag and maneuver my walker across the house, out the front door and around to the trash can… And all that is before I even try to open it or put anything in. And my “tip it on the side” strategy for cat litter is no longer viable either. There’s no way to do that safely with the walker. So, I come up with the brilliant solution of using bungee cords to attach the full, plastic trash bag to a luggage cart which I will then somehow, get to where it needs to go without letting the cats out of the house. And then I proceed to try and wheel this wobbly contraption, which moves like a cross between jiggling Jell-O and the sudden flailing movements of an angry toddler, to my trash can without getting the bag stuck on anything.
I get my awkward burden to my destination. And, by some unknown magic, I do this without puncturing the bag. I unhook it from the luggage cart and stand there. Staring at it. Trying to figure out how to safely get it from the ground into the trash can. Hopelessness is welling up inside me. I’m about to burst into tears because I can no longer do this most basic job I’ve been doing since before I was a teenager.
Suddenly, the twelve-year-old who lives across the street is approaching me. I panic because neither of us is wearing a mask. We have this awkwardly shouted conversation about what I’m trying to do, and I hobble away from the bag, back to the walkway so he can approach the bag. I watch, as this gangly twelve-year-old, who is at least half a foot taller than I am, manages to open the can, lift the bag, and heave it into the can with ease. More smoothly than I ever have. I’m standing there in awe, amazed at his grace, and surprised by his unprompted helpfulness. He looks at me and says, “You should message my Mom if you need help again on Wednesday,” and he walks back to his bicycle to make lonely circles in the cul-de-sac.
Erika Grumet, MSW
Erika Grumet, MSW (she/her or they/them) was born and raised on Long Island. She earned a Masters in Social Work from Stony Brook University.
She has been researching and writing essays and poems about mental health, physical disability, sexuality (particularly bisexuality), rape and sexual assault, gun violence, the writing process, and a variety of other topics. In addition to writing and managing content for the website, Erika brings her experience as a social worker and educator. She works with writers to help them manage or overcome issues that prevent them from bringing their best writing.
Erika was recently chosen to Lilith Magazine’s “The New Forty” cohort. You can also find her published in Bi Women’s Quarterly, Kveller, and Lilith, with a forthcoming publication from Spoonie Journal.
I hadn’t realized my own situation for managing to take out the trash had become so normalized in my head until I read your essay.
I live alone in a garden level apartment with 7 steps to the building’s front foyer and exit. The dumpsters are a short distance from the rear exit, but due to the slope of the lot, there are 7 stairs up to that exit, then a flight of stairs with a wobbly handrail down to the parking lot. I require a rollator due to balance issues and am still dealing with both lingering long covid, loss of muscle and stamina resulting from 5 weeks of bedrest in a nursing facility and PT to heal a torn meniscus in my knee, and seemingly endless health issues that all share fatigue and joint pain in common.
To take out my own trash, I have a laundry basket that just fits on the seat of my fancy, heavy duty rollator. Two bags of trash in it, or one heavy one, and I roll my way towards the front entrance stairway. There, I park the rollator and manage to shift the basket from waist level to rest sitting halfway on the third step with no need to bend or dead lift. Then up one step at a time, first the basket and then I follow, until the basket reaches the top and I can shove it to one side from where I stand a few steps lower.
I head back down the steps backward, clinging to the handrail, to reach my rollator. The fabric seat bends easily allowing the sides to fold and lock together neatly in the middle, but it weighs 22 lbs, the tradeoff for a sturdy all-terrain model that can support my own ample weight. If I rest the handles on one shoulder, I can clutch it to my side with one arm and hand, and grip the stair rail tightly with the other to climb and pause, one step at a time. I can set the wheels on the foyer floor while I’m only on the fifth step, giving me a break.
Once I too reach the foyer, I can sit and rest for a moment or move on to placing the basket of trash bags back on the seat so I can head outside to where my car is parked in a handicapped space about 40 ft from the doorway. It’s too far for me to manage walking all the way to the dumpsters and back, especiallyon icy pavement in winter or in the heat of summer. So the basket is transferred to the back seat of my car, rollator folded and lifted into the trunk, and I drive to the dumpster to park and unload one bag at a time. Fortunately, they have sliding doors on the side so i only have to heave each bag chest high, as I’m only 5’2″ myself.
Carrying in groceries, or going to and from the laundromat, is the same process both directions making use of the laundry baskets. I’m lucky that once the pandemic lockdown eased a little, I do have a family member who can help sometimes and I was able to order groceries delivered all the way to my inside apartment door because I could tip well. When I was most ill from covid at Christmas 2020, my adult daughter who was in town and her dad let themselves in with a spare key and spirited away six sealed trash bags of my dirty clothes, towels, bedding, etc. and my gifts for the family. They washed and folded the laundry and brought it back the next day along with the family’s gifts to me and left them just inside my doorway to limit the risk if exposure. Honestly, clean laundry was the best possible gift.
Almost everyone I know either had covid that left them permanently damaged in some way, or have other health issues. I’m not sure there’s more than two fully able bodied people among us at any given time, and they are usually trying to hold down full-time jobs to help support the others. That’s just the new normal, so it took reading your essay to remind me that it’s not really the way most people live.
that sounds terrible. thank you for contributing in such detail. I’m sure there are other people in the same boat as you and Erika who just don’t want to talk about their issues. So by talking about it yourself, you’re opening up the possibility someone else will feel seen and may even respond about their own situation.