Daily Archives: August 7, 2011

What one luxury do you refuse to live without?

07 Sunday Aug 2011

Posted by in postaday2011

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In our small town, we have a transfer station (the town dump) that is open Saturday mornings and Tuesday evenings. When the kids were much younger, I used to take our garbage and recyclable materials to the dump every week. Over the years, the town instituted changes that were really, in hind sight, counterproductive for the management of the transfer station. They fired the manager who knew everyone by name, maintained the place really well and took the time to help out if you needed it. The new management started refusing more and more items to either be recycled or literally dumped. It got to be very frustrating to pay all this money for a transfer station sticker and be forced to pay more money to get rid of items that were previously accepted.

One year, my husband had some work done on the outside of the house and we got a container from Waste Management to deal with all the debris. We were also putting our household garbage in the container. After a few weeks of not having to deal with the transfer station, the thought of going back was too aggravating. I told my husband that since he never helped with the transfer station whatsoever, that I should at least have the choice of having the container on a permanent basis. I argued that the benefits more than made up for the costs of a monthly bill. The transfer station sticker itself for the year was close to five hundred dollars with severe restrictions as to what you were allowed to dump there. The cost of the container was roughly double that but we wouldn’t have to worry about extra fees for dumping, we wouldn’t have to worry about not making it on time to the dump and those hours were getting more and more restricted with the years. With these points I got my container for keeps and I have been happy ever since.

My container is my luxury that I refuse to be without, I do not ever want to go back to dealing with that awful transfer station again. The aggravation is simply not worth it, I suffered through the new management for long enough, it simply isn’t right to have someone be rude to you for using a utility that you pay for even beyond the transfer station sticker, you are paying your taxes that also help fund the transfer station. I would rather find a way to do without something else than do without my container.