Since I live alone, I generate trash very slowly. Since I feel like it’s “wasteful” to take out the trash before the bag is (almost) completely full, I’ve had a couple of problems with fruit flies in the warm months in the past. I’ve decided that needs to stop.
Unfortunately, I don’t notice things like “how often do I take out the trash” when I’m actually paying attention, especially since the entire reason I’ve left it in the first place is to let it fill up, the obvious visual cue that, as I said, has led to problems. So how often do you do it? How long do you think I should let it build before taking it out to avoid the pest issue?
It depends on if you put food in the trash or not. Some people dispose of food debris in a garbage disposal or compost bin or whatever, and only use their trash for paper, plastic, etc. In that case, you could go quite a while without taking it out. If you do put food in the trash, my personal limit is about 3 days.
My trash takes 7-10 days to fill up enough to take out. I solved the fly problem by putting compostables in a small bag in the freezer. Yeah, it takes up a little freezer space, but it keeps the kitchen trash from smelling and keeps all bugs at bay. Just take it out and plop on top after removing the kitchen bag from the bin, which frees up just the perfect amount of space for the bag from the freezer.
When it’s full. 13 gallon/49.2 liters. If there are some leftovers or something that I know will stink, I keep then in reserve to toss when its almost full. Also, I can dump the bathroom trash into the kitchen when it’s almost full, and that’s mostly paper. Kitty litter goes into its own bag and then kitchen garbage, but it only stinks for a few minutes.
Food debris goes in a bowl on the counter, and in summer I empty that bowl once a day on the compost heap in the back yard. Not meat and cheese debris, though. That stays in the frisge till trash day.
That makes the trashbag far less stinky, so I empty it once a week.
The cans, pots etc have their own recycling place, and that is the most odour problem, because i refuse to wash my trash, that goes too far.
I still have fruit flues in summer, but the source is my large fresh fruit bowl, and somehow that seems less of a problem.
Suggestion for “wet” trash (food trimmings, banana peels, etc.):
[ul][li] Collect small empty plastic bags. Empty bread bags work well.[/li][li] Keep one of same in freezer.[/li][li] Put “wet” trash in plastic bag in freezer.[/li][li] Take out your regular (“dry”) trash at your convenience. When you do, take out freezer bag with frozen wet trash with it.[/li][/ul]
If your wet trash is sludgy enough (rancid pudding, leftover soup, that last tablespoon of lima beans) you can flush it. A bag of squishy, sprouted potatoes, not so much.
I find a trashcan with a lid or one kept under the cupboard helps cut down on fruit flies a LOT.
In your case, I suggest making it once a week on a designated Take The Trash Out Day. It’s generally easier to track things on a weekly basis than on longer periods.
In my case it depends a lot on the weather and on how much organic I’m generating. Depending on what I cook and eat, and thanks to living in a place where 30ºC is almost unheard of, sometimes I can go a couple of weeks without taking down the organics bag - I’ll take it down on Big Cooking Day, then generate very little organic trash until the next Big Cooking Day.
In many areas curbside recycling really does dramatically reduce garbage waste. Both cereal boxes and milk jugs are recyclable in my area so they wouldn’t go in the garbage to begin with. We recycle a 10 gal garbage bag of plastic/metal/glass, and one paper grocery bag of collapsed paper packaging and recylable junk mail every week.
For actual garbage – basically just food waste and nonrecyclable packaging – we just reuse small grocery bags and chuck em about every other day. When we had a more traditional large garbage can we got roaches, yuck. Discarding it frequently is an easy solution that works for us.
I don’t have trash collection at my house, so I take my trash to the collection center once a week. It’s usually one dog or horse feed bag each week. If I have something particularly icky, I’ll bag in in a grocery sack (T shirt bag) and tie it up before tossing. The soda can recycling goes in once a month, but I rinse the cans before I put them in their bin.