My neighbor will sometimes put my can away for me, which is nice, but he is the same neighbor who switched out my nicer can for his while I was living elsewhere for awhile.
I just have to laugh at myself whenever I allow a fleeting bit of irritation to linger in my head about the cans being switched. I didn’t buy the can and I only use it for trash. It’s just so goofy.
In my old house, trash pickup was in the front of the house, off the sidewalk. I would leave my trash can for pickup on the grassy strip between the sidewalk and the road, where it wasn’t in the way of anyone. Some days I’d be lazy, and wouldn’t bring it back up to the house (it was annoying, because we didn’t have driveways, because we had alley garages). My elderly neighbor would take it upon himself to occasionally take my trash can up in front of my front porch.
I found it incredibly rude and presumptuous. But he and his wife were normally incredibly nice people, so I ignored it.
In some cities. Far from universal.
That was my thought; ours at least are the City’s property, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s part of an ordinance somewhere that specifies that they have to be out of the street or something.
Personally, I wouldn’t care as long as they moved them with care and didn’t make things worse in some way.
My cans belong to me, and we hire a private trash hauler who picks up the trash from our driveway. (no municipal pickup. I need to hire a trash hauler or take my trash to the town RTC.) So I have no direct experience.
But I think it’s pretty reasonable for someone to move the cans out of the street once the trash has been picked up. Putting them where they block foot traffic, and incidentally making you look bad, was rude. But otherwise it seems like a helpful and neighborly thing to do.
I live in a location similar to the OP. Our state dead ends at a middle school. Aside from any comment as to the little darlings being unable to walk, our street is nigh impassable for approx 1/2 hr from 8-830 am, and 315-345 pm. The people parking waiting for their kids are - um - not especially considerate of the homeowners along the street. It really bugs me when they park overhanging our driveway - but I pretty much try to ignore it. Not that big of a deal. Can be amusing, as probably 90% of these parents are driving land-yacht SUVs!
But we put our garbage cans on the “parkway” - the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb. Or at the end of the driveway - again, short of being in the street.
Having cans IN the street strikes me as very curious. I’m surprised any municipality would tolerate such clear impediments to traffic. If I were required to put my cans IN the street, I would not mind if the parents picking up school kids moved the can out of the street.
I share the preference that people park in front of their houses when no impediment. And that includes visitors/workmen. One exception is if people are coming from one direction or the other. I could see them parking across the street from their destination, instead of turning around.
We’ve discussed this before. Yes, I realize that the streets are public. A couple of other wrinkles I acknowledge are, in our neighborhood, if you park in front of one house, you might be more exposed to potential harm from someone facing out of a driveway on the other side of the street. I’m also surprised when a block can be empty of cars, other than 2 parked right across from each other. The streets are narrow enough that that really makes a narrow passageway
I live in a situation exactly like the OP. No one has ever moved our empty cans off the curb, but I wouldn’t mind if they did. Someone once did move my not yet emptied can to the sidewalk, and of course didn’t bother to replace it. (I’m retired, so I found it and moved it back before the trash truck arrived.)
We put the last can to be picked up nearest our driveway, to try to keep people from blocking it, which they do.
My neighbor and I move emptied cans to our gates to get them out of the way, especially if the trashmen leave the can in the middle of the street. And we all are okay with filling each other’s empty space with our compostable cuttings or even trash, but we all pay for pickup so it isn’t the situation mentioned above.
I’m a lot more concerned with the parents who run their kids across the street, seemingly allergic to the crosswalk not far away.
Yeah - it sorta surprises me that the school near us is not more on top of how/where the kids are dropped off. It has been a while and was in a different town, but I recall there being pretty strict rules about where kids could be dropped off/picked up, where they could cross streets, etc.