My Trash Can is Trash? I Refuse!

The idea of throwing away a trash can is one of those meta-paradoxy things.  Like when you see a sign that says "SIGN" on it.  Or a door that has a smaller door inside it.

My wager?  This kid gets a tractor-trailer stuck under an overpass in about 20 years.

I don't expect much out of a trash can.  There's really only two qualities I demand - capaciousness, and the ability to remain stationary.  The white, elliptical one in my kitchen has been serving me just fine for several years now.  Oh, the things I've placed into it!

But as of late it's been causing me more trouble than it's worth.  The lid stopped working.  How?  See, I had one of those fancy lids.  You merely press down on a plastic latch, and the lid rises, granting you unfettered access to the garbage within.  The wonders never cease.

The problem came when I decided to pull a Danny Tanner and clean the trash can itself.  I took her outside, sprayed her down, gave her a decent scrubbing, and rinsed.  Was that gleam in my eye the feeling we call pride?  No, it was just some Formula 409 that splashed into the old ocular cavity, but still, things felt right.

Reassembly time.  The reassembly of a trash can is one of the easier home improvement projects one can undertake.  Step 1: put the lid back on the container.  Step 2: Hey, it's 10:30 AM - isn't Frasier on?  And yet, I blew it.  Suddenly the latch that should be flinging the lid from horizontal to vertical was laying down on the job.  It was no longer spring-loaded.  It no longer had springs.

The search was on for those pesky buggers.  It went on for days, weeks even.  In the meantime, I tried a variety of configurations so as to continue using the waste basket: 

"The Gaga"

"The Kareem"

"The This Guy"

None were particularly pleasing.  I learned it takes some serious dexterity to manually open a lid while carefully balancing a swept-up pile of dog hair and debris, while also trying to program the Bluetooth on your iPhone, because it's 2011 now, and you have to multitask.

Torsion springs.  Obviously.

Many people would declare this trash can ready for the great landfill in the sky, or even just the regular landfill.  Not I.  Not now.  What with my deep consideration for this planet, and my utter, utter lack of money.  They're merely springs, I thought.  I refuse to be impeded by tiny coils of torsion-loaded aluminum!  And if I didn't think in those words then, I surely did after a web search or two.

A trip to my local home improvement store resulted in purchasing a pair each of three different springs.  Two didn't fit.  One did, but offered far less resistance than needed to fling the plastic lid up.

Something about "can hardly contain myself".  That should work.

In a fit of rationality, I decided to contact the manufacturer and see if they'd send me some freebie replacements.   Sterilite Corporation.  Makers of all things plastic in your home.  Doing their thing up near the northern-most border of Massachusetts.  Good looking website.  Contact Us form.  It's on.

I wrote, explaining my springless circumstance.  A few days passed.   Sandra LaPointe in the Customer Service Department wrote back.  Sentence One: "Thank you for contacting Sterilite."  Great start; offering the customer gratitude.  I'm liking it.  Sentence Two: "We apologize for the spring problem you experienced."  Already got my apology - a lot of people would stop right here.  And she specifically referenced "the spring problem".  Unlikely to be auto-generated. Sterilite, you're off to a great start.

She went on in detail describing how I could locate the product code so they could see if such replacement springs were available.  I hit her back with the info within hours.  A few more days pass. Yesterday I get an email.  It's LaPointe.  She doesn't waste any time and jumps right into the resolution:

Hell yeah.  Sterilite straight up delivers. 

Now that the logistics of the matter are behind us, let's address this story's moral.  Was it simply an example of fine customer service?  A socially-conscious corporation doing the right thing?  A softened stance on the part of Big Spring?  Nope.  This here's about me.

How easy would it have been to walk - forlorn - to my curb, trash can in hand? Stupid easy.  I resisted.  If I had done so, my next step would be a trip to any of myriad retailers within a five mile radius: Home Depot, Lowe's, Target, Walmart, Kmart, or dozens of smaller purveyors of home goods.  I'd be out $25.  Relatively little harm - but major foul. 

If we're going to make it as a species - that's right, I'm taking this argument humanity-wide - we need to properly make use of our things.  That's one less structure of injection-molded polypropylene that needs to be produced.  It's what we call a baby step.

Now I haven't received the springs yet.  For all I know they may be the wrong ones, or brittle or rusted, or maybe they'll belie a terrific misunderstanding and be tickets to see Bruce at Madison Square Garden.  But for the time being, I'm satisfied.

EDITOR'S NOTE:  I know what you're thinking and I agree - I passed on too many good 'spring' jokes.  Right at the end there - after "I'm satified" - the classy phrase "Hope springs eternal" would have been a dynamite drop-in.  I took a pass.  Something seasonal would have been appropriate - "More like spring of our discontent!".  I would have also liked to have used the onomatopoeia boing, but it didn't come naturally.  I could go on and on about similar regrets, but I better bounce.  I leave you with the only spring that has its own song.

Slinky's one of those words that if you say too many times, it loses all meaning.  Marginally fun fact.