Stoop kid's afraid to leave his stoop

Why is it that taking out the trash is actually one of the most annoying things in the world? It is one of those irritating little chores that you are in total and utter denial about doing, and for no particular reason.

It literally takes two minutes to walk the 20 steps to the nearest dumpster, but I would rather clean up the entire apartment twice with nothing but a tiny toothbrush than take out the godforsaken trash!

They warn us during the first UFA block meeting that you absolutely cannot leave trash bags on your front stoop thing (note: STOOP KID from Hey Arnold should probably pop into your head with the mention of the word stoop -- if not, hopefully you're at least laughing about it now that I mentioned it, but if that's not even the case then you may consider perhaps re-examining your childhood).

Yet, despite this warning about the trash-free zone, when I walked out of my apartment this morning I saw trash bags on both my neighbors' stoops. Now this isn't to call out our neighbors by any stretch of the imagination, considering that our trash was more disgustingly just chilling in a pile of bags in our awkward hallway since we already received our first warning from the RA about trash on our stoop earlier this week, but just to show you how much everyone DREADS taking out the trash. It astounds me that we would rather let the aroma of our past week's dinners, tissues, snacks and used Lysol wipes waft into our living room rather than just pick up the bag and take it out.

Also, how often do we find ourselves trying to cram as much trash as we possibly can into the one bag? We know that the more trash we put in, the heavier the bag is going to get. We are an educated, intelligent and logical student body, yet for some reason, when it comes to the trash, we defenestrate all of our smarts and make our own situation worse.

Yes, I did just use the word defenestrate -- I don't have a particularly inflated vocabulary; in fact, it's the opposite. In an effort to enhance my word choice, I just checked my Word of the Day rip-off calendar and made it a personal goal to use it in my article this week. In case you're particularly interested, it means "to throw out the window." It comes from the Latin "de" meaning out of and "fenestra" meaning window --those Romans were just so smart! I bet they took out their trash ... and they probably didn't even have Glad Force Flex bags to make the task a bit easier!

Maybe we just love the satisfying feeling we get after we finally make the executive decision to stop being lazy and just take out the fricken trash. I know that I feel about 73 times more accomplished if I take out the trash that day when in reality all I did was walk 20 extra steps with gross smelly disgustingness leaking on my toes to the dumpster where I'm met with the aroma of near death and about 14 bees having the time of their life on the bottom left corner of the little slidey dumpster door.

And talking about the bees -- I'm terrified of bees and every time it's my turn to take out the trash I have to give myself a little pep talk about how the bees are not going to sting me. Yet, despite this little pre-game chat I give myself, I still find myself slowly and stealthily approaching the dumpster, desperately throwing the bags in and then running away like a seven-year-old. I should really stop being an immature slob, or maybe just get a husband who can take out the trash for me. ... Either seems like a solid game plan in my mind.

This week I am going to make a resolution to take out the trash as soon as the bag gets full -- I probably shouldn't make this a resolution considering I don't need any more failures to add to my list, but I'll let you know how it goes in next week's article!

Let's try to make our apartments less smelly, more inviting, and generally less heebygeeby-ey one bag of trash at a time!