Garbage

Not a lot of things surprise me with having four children. Like the amount of diapers we go through in a month. Or that my hands crack and bleed 3 out of 4 seasons of the year because I'm always washing them or washing dishes. Or that meals need to constantly be made. Or that I have to constantly remind the older boys to wash their hands or go to the bathroom or clean up their clothes that are lying all over the floor. Or the amount of laundry I do, or the increasing grocery bill, or the temper tantrums that still happen even after we turn six. All these things, I can generally understand. I don't really get how a dozen muffins lasts 4 or 5 days in our house. (I actually thought they'd be gone sooner than that but maybe they're not really all that good, or maybe it's just because I'm not eating them...).

BUT, the one thing that never fails to amaze me is the amount of garbage we accumulate! See this very full garbage can? Would you believe it was probably empty only 24 hours ago? Now this is no small, little garbage can! This is a good size container, and it's overflowing with diapers, papers, plastic, bags, I don't really know what's all in there, but it's FULL!!! How does it get full so fast?

Before I got married, I lived with two other girls in a duplex, and my one roommate had this grand idea to get a large garbage can for the kitchen. I'm talking about the green plastic ones that you usually put out for the garbage trucks. This big ugly green garbage can was in our kitchen of that duplex. I don't know how often the garbage got taken out, but it usually smelled pretty bad by the time it was full. Fortunately now, our garbage rarely has the opportunity to give off any kind of foul odour (that's because Andrew's poopy diapers are OUTSIDE as soon as they come off of him). I just don't get how it is that I'm trying to delicately balance a wet diaper on top of a very full container of garbage less than a day after I emptied the bag...I guess it's just one of those life mysteries I will never understand.