Home Guru: Healthy, Wealthy and Wise, Thanks to My Garbage Hauler
At the beginning of the year, my town switched garbage haulers, a move that saved each resident $70 annually in taxes. A good thing, right? Yes, except that this move changed my life, at least two days a week.
When I founded my own business some years ago, with one wing of my historic home as its office, I thought, great, I’ll be able to stay at home all day and plan my schedule exactly as I want.
Only recently did I realize how little control we have in our daily routine at home, and that we live our lives primarily to accommodate other people’s schedules. I’m trying to accept that reality, after a recent and heavy dose of disruption in managing my time at home.
Here I am working at my computer at 6:05 a.m. Ordinarily I’d be snuggled up in bed until 7 a.m., my usual waking time. That may seem late for some, but as a night person, I frequently work until 10 or 11 p.m., and I’m one who definitely needs his sleep. What changed my schedule, at least two days a week, is the new garbage hauler.
With the former service, there was a set schedule for pick-up on my street Mondays and Thursdays, always at 7:15 a.m. sharp. That allowed me to lull about in bed until 7 a.m.
When the new refuse hauling contract went into effect, however, there were several days when our garbage was not picked up. When my wife called to complain, she was told that we missed our pick-up because the truck rolled by at the (ungodly) hour of 6 a.m. The new contract, she was told, allows the garbage to be picked up anytime from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m., and there is no guarantee of exactly the time it will be done.
That’s fine for folks who buy heavy-duty trash cans with lids that they leave out the night before, but we prefer to use plastic bags. We find them easier to manage and leaving them out overnight would provide a messy feast for our little furry friends. So, we accept the responsibility on our end for that.
The only rub is that there are days when the garbage isn’t picked up until well into the day, and I regret that I couldn’t have slept until noon if I had so chosen.
In a way, I suppose I should be grateful to the hauling company for providing me an extra two hours of waking time per week for working hard to reach my life’s dreams, albeit at the expense of experiencing some real dreams while sleeping.
The real challenge in accommodating a sane schedule at home came recently when my wife and I decided to upgrade our kitchen and bathrooms and to do our own contracting, hiring all the individual suppliers to do the work. That would be Butch the electrician, Joe the painter, Anthony the granite supplier, Michael the carpenter, Thomas the tile man, Mark the plumber, Max the appliance supplier and Reece the floor installer. All told, that involved eight suppliers who each have their own schedules that we had to discuss, accommodate and coordinate. But, of course, each supplier told us when they were available to come, and no one asked what time was convenient for us.
We had to be mindful of keeping them out of each other’s way as best we could, but sometimes two or even three of them had to be at the house at the same time, such as when the new sinks and countertops were installed and the stone supplier, plumber and electrician needed to be here to hook everything up again.
Each of them did the most superlative job you could imagine, but by the time we were ready to prepare our first meal in our new kitchen, we asked ourselves, how does anyone ever plan their time sanely when building a new house, much less upgrading an existing one?
“You’re supposed to be the Home Guru,” my wife said, “shouldn’t you be able to figure that out?” Another big question is, how does anyone manage a regular job 9 to 5 job outside the home yet coordinate the schedules of all those involved with an upgrade? I guess that’s what contractors are for. I’ll remember that next time.
But for now, I’ve written this column in the extra time I’ve had since getting up earlier to accommodate the non-scheduled schedule of the new garbage hauler. If I’m granted Benjamin Franklin’s promise that rising early will make me healthy, wealthy and wise, I suppose I’ll have my garbage hauler to thank.
Bill Primavera is a Residential and Commercial Realtor® associated with Coldwell Banker, as well as a marketer and journalist who writes regularly as The Home Guru. For questions about home maintenance or to buy or sell a home, he can be emailed at Bill@TheHomeGuru.com or called directly at 914-522-2076.
