The Gift of "Solid" Waste: Elevating Kitchen Trash to the Level of Art
Jan 03 '01 (Updated Jan 19 '01)
The Bottom Line Great gift because it's unexpected, unexpectedly attractive, and actually useful.
My family is not prone to extravagant spending. Though I earn a good salary, we tend to put our discretionary money into restoring, improving and otherwise upgrading our old home and our garden, or buying original art work or old furniture that we restore, rather than spending on overpriced appliance luxuries, electronic gadgets, regular huge nights out, or optional day-to-day conveniences. Add to that the cost of two kids away full-time at college at the same time, four cars (three of them quite used, please note), a mortgage, some necessary emergency expenses, etc...well, you get the picture. It’s a question of priorities and budget. So we gladly shop for all manner of necessities at discount stores and outlets and yard sales, and even do that sparingly.
But to every rule there is an exception, which brings me to the kitchen trash can.
The problem:
You see, my wife is the cook in the family, my contribution to the family menu having worn out its welcome the 152nd time I fixed the only dish I could remember from my college days. (There are only so many variations on macaroni and cheese….with ham, with peas, with ham and peas, etc.)
As a quid pro quo for her cooking legerdemain, the unspoken rule is that I clean up – dishes, table, kitchen trash. I’ve become quite an expert in dish soaps and soap pads, glass cleaner sprays, sponges, dishwashers, useful kitchen sink add-ons, etc. I can even tell a good kitchen trash bag from a bad one just by hearing it being pulled from the box. And to prove I'm still a Man, "I don't wear no stinkin' sissy rubber gloves."
So, after years of frustration at cheap kitchen trash cans, I let it be known in family circles that what I REALLY wanted for Christmas was a trash can that worked. Worked as in the following:
- Didn’t have that darned swinging bullet top that always pushed up against the wall or the base of the counter so I couldn’t open it without first having to pull the cylinder away from the interfering surface with my one free hand or my right foot, resulting in the top sliding off sideways and falling in to the slimy trash bag, and my dropping whatever I was intending to throw out in the first place onto the tile floor, and creating an instant magnet for our three dogs and our cat.
- Didn’t have so loose a contact between the removable top and the base that even if I bought the more expensive “tie” kitchen trash bags, they would always sag under the weight of the trash and slip to the bottom of the cylinder, resulting in a messy overflow of glop that only I of all the members of the family would notice, and that only after it was too late to avoid an effluvium of refuse (and the quick arrival of our three dogs and our cat.)
- Didn’t have the cheap plastic skin that inevitably retains every stain no matter how often you try to clean it from every piece of trash that missed the opening when the bullet top inevitably closed up on you in mid-dump (and probably made our three dogs think it was a dirty fire plug...nah, I won’t go there.)
- Didn’t have the stupid pedal you push down with your foot only to have the top of the over-stuffed, too-small canister spring open so the trash your kids packed in as hard as they could under the guise of helping clean the kitchen would pop up as if freed from Dante’s ninth circle of hell and pour out all over the floor, or worse yet, over the one pair of shined, unscuffed shoes you're careful not to wear out onto the lawn when the sprinkler system is activated so they will actually look presentable for a while. (And that, too, will bring the three dogs and the cat running....)
The Solution:
Meet the “Brabantia Touch-Bin”, the state-of-the-art kitchen trash can made by the aptly-named Brabantia Solid Company of Belgium.
You may remember the flap over the $600 toilet seat for the Pentagon. Or was it the $200 hammer for the Air Force, or the reverse, or whatever? Well I am the proud of owner of a $160 Brabantia Touch-Bin kitchen trash can, thanks to my wife taking the hint and exploring the recesses of a nearby “Bed, Bath and Beyond” store. And THAT was a DEAL with a discount coupon; the darn thing was on sale, and lists for about $200!
That’s right folks, but it’s a winner. Step right up:
- The “oh so cool” space-age-looking 13.2 gallon cylinder is made of ice-shiny chrome that not only doesn’t detract from the look of our newly refurbished kitchen, it enhances it, thereby becoming a relatively inexpensive way to justify the thousands of dollars spent on the darn kitchen.
- The flat top opens upward with a simple touch of the so-called “touch” spot at one lower end of the circular top. It pops upward smoothly and quietly with an almost hydraulic sensation of power worthy of a great trash master, and it closes firmly with simple soft downward pressure on the popped-up lid (a black plastic circle in the center surrounded by a thick edge of chrome.)
- The top unit fits snugly onto the cylinder with a loud “click” that ensures the trash bag lining the inside of the cylinder is held snugly against the side. When you drop heavy trash into it, rather than get that sinking feeling as you watch the whole bag slip to the bottom you experience profound joy in watching the bag expand and swallow up the content in a most efficient and space-saving manner, not unlike a Star Trek starship being sucked into a beckoning "Worm Hole."
- You can leave as little as a half inch of trash bag to fold over the top of the lip of the cylinder before snapping the top into place, and still have the top hold the bag up when filled with heavy trash being poured through the open top. That means no unsightly line of trash bag appearing from under the chrome top’s bottom line, embarrassing us in front of our guests who were just marveling at our kitchen remodel job, and no reminders of how much you hate it when your kid wears a sweatshirt over untucked shirttails.
- The cylinder has recessed pull-out handles for moving the entire unit easily if required without spilling anything because the top and the base unexpectedly came apart.
- The instructions (that's right, a bin with instructions!) are in English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Dutch, lending an air of worldly “savoir faire” to the otherwise pedestrian experience of dealing in kitchen trash.
- The art-nouveau, glitzy website of Brabantia Solid Company (http://www.brabantia.com) is so cool and esoteric that there is no way to get past the sexy pictures of the incredibly smooth and stylized chrome-laced designs that permeate it and actually find out how much anything costs, what it does, or how to order it. How cool is that? I mean, talk about impressing any snotty neighbor who’s trying to figure out what’s that amazing cylinder thing in your kitchen? They'll visit the site after stealing a look at the brand name on the cylinder top, see these incredible, sleek, sexy unexplained pictures,and probably think it’s an “objet d’art” we cleverly placed in our kitchen at a cost of thousands!
The trashman hummeth. I am a happy camper. And as we all know, you can’t put a price on happiness.
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Epinions.com ID:
NFP
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Location: Washington, DC
Reviews written: 126
Trusted by: 175 members
About Me:
Moving from LA to DC. Will start up again once I'm more settled-in.
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