If you cook, it will sink to high heaven...how often is trash day, once a week?

Chicken parts/wrappings, fish stuff, bean cans, etc. smell really bad quickly.

As long as you only put dry trash in the compactor, it's a great help because you can fit so much in it. Really smelly garbage that can't be composted or put down the disposal can be tied up in plastic and frozen until trash day.

I actually schedule my shopping and weekly vegetable prep so that I do most of it on the day before trash pick-up.

My experience with a TC is that almost everything dry enough to be compacted gets recycled. So much depends on what kind of garbage you generate. Id start an inventory/analysis, just as you would plan out storage in the kitchen.

(Are you moving? I've been away and must have missed the news.)

Find a can with a tight fitting lid.

We have very little wet trash and eat meat rarely. I don't remember having an actual carcass here ever. How is the compaction and.seal of the bag.? People tear apart and rummage through trash bags something crazy here.

I carry a trash bag through the house to get it from the back to the front. It's not a big deal.

Do people use trash compactors these days? I thought they were a 1970s thing that faded away when recycling took over.

I would do what Graywings does, put it out back and
carry it through the house.
If you put your mind to it, you can lessen the bulk of
the garbage by the way you throw stuff away. For instance
use an empty cardboard milk/juice container to throw
away coffee grinds and other small stuff. In other word put stuff inside of other stuff.

The art of packing a garbage bag is seldom discussed
in polite society :)

Just approach throwing away garbage like
you're paying by the bag.:) really!

We've had a TC since before recycling. With 3 kids, 2 huge dogs and lots of visitors it was a great appliance. It's especially useful if you have to haul your trash to the dump or pay by the garbage can.

Now that the kids and dogs are gone and we recycle as much as we can the TC rarely gets used. Since anything wet or smelly goes into the trash can under the sink we can let our TC go for 3 to 4 weeks before emptying it. I think the only things we put inside is wax paper, foil, plastic wrap, plastic that can't be recycled, the occasional pizza box or take out food container.

We buy the compactor bags at Shop Rite or the box stores and they're 2.5 mil thick. The seal at at the bottom of the bag is strong and our bags have never ripped. However when you're ready to dispose of the bag you have to use a twist tie to close the bag, the compactor doesn't seal it.

We take our garbage to the dumping area (by choice) and usually only do so once a week. We actually have little garbage also because of all that is recycled. Everything goes in seperate containers (kept in the garage) and I rinse all glass, plastic and cans before putting them in the containers. We do compost so that helps with alot of peels. Not big meat eaters either but we only buy "pieces" (ie chicken breasts), so not much to toss. We don't have a problem with odors. Do seal everything tightly. We have never used a compactor.

I've never had a TC but a friend does and he loves it. He puts one in in every house he moves into and even tried to talk us into getting one. That man should be a TC salesman given how much he raves about it! I didn't need it because of the proximity of my kitchen door to the outdoor trash bin. It depends on how far you have to travel to throw out trash and maybe even the size of the trash bin itself. In a large house like he has distance is a factor which is why it works so well for him. In my case it isn't necessary. Sounds like you are a good candidate too. Go for it! :D

Why can't you keep your trash collection bin outside the house by the front? Our recycle and trash bins sit on the side of the house by the side door - but that is almost at the front of the house. We have no garage, so that isn't an option for us.

You can get some cool free-standing screens to put around them if you are worried about appearances.

trellis screen with planter

We truly have little wet garbage, tho. We have a disposer, and that is where all the food scraps go. The only garbage that I take out right away is packaging from raw meat, and of course anything going in the recycling container just because I don't want it sitting on the kitchen counter. I don't have room for an indoor bin for it.

Thought I'd checked in here often enough to know that you'd finally found your Home...pal? Perhaps this is merely an interim move?
TC's: had 'em, ditched 'em. Like forhgtv, stinky food goes in the freezer till trash day. If the attractive solution Les shows isn't possible, I'd haul it from front to back once a week...not a biggie. p.s. did you know chicken bones are fine in the disposal( I've heard they actually help sharpen the blades). And please, tell those of us who missed the news all about your new abode!

The front is the public sidewalk. People go through your trash like crazy here, so even if we were allowed to keep it out front (which I am not so sure we could), it would have to be under lock and key.

But, but , but pal! Maybe I'm late to the game, but did you get that old home you were seeking at last?

Not exactly, its a rental property first, and its only 48 years old. The federal/greek revival era house with any level of interior intactness is out of reach.

Yes, but you have bought a new home, right? It will be wonderful fun to put your mark on it, even if it may not be your final dream home. I'm sure everyone here is looking forward to hearing all about this projects. How did this happen? You sound underwhelmed.

This verges on TMI, but I like to pre-compact a lot of stuff. Take the air out of everything. Plastic bottles are crushed (they go in the recycle bin anyway) boxes are flattened and folded (then held to the final compact shape with a bit of tape) Veg scraps go down the disposer (don't compost any kitchen waste for fear of rats). I "recycle" the roast chicken carcass into soup, so there are just a handful of tiny bones. I usually save meat scraps/waste in the freezer (which only ever has ice cubes in it) so they don't get foul while awaiting trash day. I only create one "tall kitchen bag" of waste per week from my house by being careful like this.
I can do almost everything by hand that a compactor would do.
Casey

Congrats on the new place.

No compactor necessary here either. Usually just one small bag of trash per week. Potentially smelly stuff might go in the garage freezer, though you're likely to have a spare in the basement. If so and if you'd be inclined to similarly use that freezer, then storing the rest of the garbage in the basement makes sense. If not, I'd opt for outside the back door.

I'd rather use the valuable RE a TC would take up for a wine cooler ;-)

Palimpest - I think you've mentioned that you're in Philly and since they now have single stream recycling I guess everyone has to store their bins inside until collection day. I hadn't thought about it before but that can be an issue - storing recycling and trash until pick up day - which I guess is once a week.

When we rented apartments in Philly we were always in larger building with dumpsters.

Thanks for all the various thoughts. We don't generate a lot of potentially smelly garbage. I am not sure there has ever been any chicken skin in the apartment.:)

But there will probably be a turkey on occasion in the future. And a cat and dog. (Dead turkey, live cat and dog.)

We flatten and rinse almost everything too.

I have been thinking of something like one of those sealed lid in counter chutes, but mounted into the floor of the sink base with the bins on a high shelf in the basement right underneath. The one thing we generate a LOT of is plastic in the form of Diet Iced Green Tea containers, since I drink almost a gallon a day :/

I am not underwhelmed, (getting elated is not my strong suit though)--but this house will be a rental first. Its actually a good property. I found that through my search I was interested in houses that were genuine Something, and any period before about 1975 was fair game if it was a cohesive architectural statement. I am not sure I would be thrilled with an 18th or 19th c. house that was a complete facsimile inside. This would be rather --revisionist, I guess and would be about as genuine as me going to work in the ancient tartan of my district.

We make loads of trash. Some weeks I wonder how we manage to do so with only 3 in the house. I wouldn't do a TC, but rather a large trash can in the back and take it around front on trash day. We have 2 large each of regular and comingled recyclables plus the yardwaste bin that go down our 300 ft. driveway every single week. Its a PIA, but just part of life. The more you cook, entertain, etc., the more trash you have on trash day.

My DH's grandparents lived in Chestnut Hill area for most of their lives, and they froze their garbage trash in gal ziplocs. They were too old for composting, and really didn't make much garbage. Maybe you could consider freezing your non-compostable waste. Put it into your trash on trash day.

We've had a trash compacter for 25 years; we're on our second. We don't fill it the way we used to now that we're empty nesters, but it's still nice not having to dump it until the weekly rubbish day. I buy the wax-paper-lined brown paper compacter bags from either Sears or our local Ace Hardware. We do recycle newspapers and other clean paper, and I'm trying to get better about recycling glass and plastic, but we still really like the compacter. Because of pipes under the sink there's no place to put a decent size garbage can in our kitchen, and pre-compacter it was always out in the open and in the way. There would be family arguments about whose turn it was to dump it.

We don't find it smells because most food scraps go in the garbage disposal or compost bin. The really stinky stuff that I don't want to put down the disposal, like shellfish shells or poultry frame, gets taken out right away, but that's not an everyday occurrence.

If I was remodeling the kitchen it would be a tough call whether to keep a compacter or build in a garbage bin, but I'm guessing DH would want to keep the compacter. The other point for us is that our town is considering implementing Pay As You Throw (PAYT), and if that goes through we'll have to use town-issued trash bags and I don't know if they'd work with a compacter.