Avoiding Smelly Trash

This is a tip from my MIL, who was staying with us last week. In small homes where not a lot of trash is generated every day, putting your perishable trash into a 13 gallon trash bag will either mean you have to throw the trash out when the bag isn't full, or that your kitchen will smell like rotting whatever-you-cooked-for-dinner-last-night... or the night before.... or the night before that.... You get the picture.

So my MIL suspends a regular plastic grocery bag over her regular trash can. We have a rectangular trash can (this might not work as well with a circular can), and the handles of the grocery bag hook onto opposite ends of the trash can (example: one handle on the top left corner, the other on the bottom right corner). There will be leftover room where you can sneak other trash into the trash can, so be careful not to let anything too stinky fall through the cracks! It only takes a day or two for that to fill up, and then it goes out, never to smell up my kitchen again. :) I think my MIL uses the grocery bag for all her trash (could be wrong about that), but I've adapted it so that the perishables go into the grocery bag and all other trash goes into the regular trash bag.

Here's a visual aid:


For someone who gets grossed out by odors (I've been known to avoid the kitchen all day when it smells funny), this is a wonderful method! :-D Besides, even though we recycle our plastic bags, we always seem to have more than we know what to do with. And they don't cost you anything, either, which makes it Frugal as well!

So that's my tip. Be sure to check out Tammy's blog for more kitchen tips... and add your own, too!