This year we exchanged a lot of kitchen equipment at xmas, and the items that work but were insufficient to the task are now in a drawer where they can be called upon if spares are needed, or, more likely, the next time someone needs a donation of kitchen equipment.

The larger city around our village has very strict trash collection rules; it must be in the correct bin (black for trash, blue for recycling) and the correct stuff must be in each bin. They write tickets if it isn't correct (after random checks or complaints from the collection truck folks). Here in our village it's a crap shoot as to what people will do about trash - I have a couple of cans, but when the guys collect the trash from cans they don't usually put them back on the curb or lawn, they often are dropped on the concrete driveway or at the curb in the street. They can get knocked over, blown away, run over, etc. If I don't have much it goes in a small bag in one of the cans, and waits near the garage until I have more that makes it enough to bother putting out for collection. I recycle and have a compost pile, so there isn't much trash. They collect it two times a week and I put it out about once every other week.

I put that kitchen waste in a heavy bag (a "contractor bag" that can be used for collecting building waste on a work site) in a trash bin, but by morning when I looked out they hadn't picked it up yet but would be by soon so I left the bag at the curb and put the bin up by the garage. Dogs and coyotes don't usually bother trash during daylight hours.