A common household chore. One that everyone is familiar with and one that no one wants to do.
Why no one wants to do it, is obvious, it’s a dirty job. It requires touching and being near dirty things.
Now if you don’t live on your own this becomes an exercise in avoidance. Since it’s a shared responsibility, each person leaves it to the others to do.
I’m prone to it myself. You come across a full bin and you know the rules, if it’s full your supposed to empty it, but then you think to yourself
“I’d say I could fit this bit of rubbish in there”.
The best avoidance households smell and their occupants become expert rubbish balancers, this also means they wait for the bin to overflow and spill everywhere before emptying it.
Which is mad, because it only makes the task ten times worse.
The trick is not to look at emptying the bin as a disgusting task but a problem to lean into.
The most annoying phase is the agonizing over having to take it out.
If you bypass this mental torture and do it straight away, the job is done quicker and you get your peace of mind back.
Pretty soon it won’t bother you at all.
It turns out that leaning into a problem instead of avoiding it, saves a lot of time and mental anguish.
What’s not to like about that?
Thomas Duggan 