Decorating tip - Garbage has its place

Little did I know that painting the garage, which I described in last week's scribblings, would turn into a case study for some future textbook on interior design. But my wife, who has a keen eye for decorating, had other ideas.

When the fresh paint in the garage was dry and the new storage cabinet was in place, it was obvious that our 7-year-old blue garbage cans were not going to fit into the decor.

These garbage cans have served us well, thanks to duct tape. And the lids are still intact.

In my opinion, duct tape is a sign of character. An object worth patching up with duct tape is one that has shown its usefulness and has created a desire to be kept.

So, for under $10, we could have replaced the garbage cans at any time, but there was no urgency to do so until the new paint was brushed onto the garage walls.

Last Saturday was designated as garbage-can quest day. In our family, "quests" occur when a parent decides to purchase something that literally disappears from existence once we want to buy it. Our sons have endured many a quest over the years. They make great stories.

The particulars of our new garbage cans were, I thought, quite simple. To match other garage items (storage unit, automobiles, barbecue grill) the cans we sought needed to be gray. Or black. And they needed to have wheels so they could be shuttled down our driveway to the curb every Monday morning (except on city holidays, which occur every other Monday).

I'll bet you never knew garbage cans were supposed to be coordinated with the highlights of your car's paint job. Well, live and learn.

So off we went to the obvious stores in Cape Girardeau and Jackson that sell garbage cans. One place with a huge selection mostly stocked containers that exceeded the city's 35-gallon limit. There were plenty of gray cans with wheels in the humongous category. Thirty-five-gallon containers, on the other hand, tend to come in blue or green -- both of which are not gray or black, if you get my drift.

We stayed on the quest trail long enough to require midday sustenance. During lunch we were both afraid to mention garbage cans, because we know how easy it is to jinx a simple trip to the store.

As the afternoon shadows lengthened, we realized we were stumped. There were no gray or black 35-gallon trash containers to be had. We had been everywhere, except for one store that we both agreed early on wouldn't have them.

Rather than buy blue or green containers when our garage motif definitely called for gray or black, we went home empty-handed.

The next day I was in the store we had crossed off our list on Saturday. This store had 35-gallon garbage cans. They only came in one color. Black.

Now that we had new garbage cans, we were faced with getting rid of the old ones. How do you throw away a garbage can? I made large signs with red ink and taped them to the tops of the old cans: "Please take the garbage cans and lids. Thanks."

And then we waited.

Sure enough, when I got home Monday the old cans were gone. It appeared the jinx of the Great Garbage Can Interior Decorating Incident had been broken.

This week I noticed the black extension cord draped over the side door in the garage for the fountain pumps on the patio. Despite our new black garbage cans, the cord stuck out like a sore thumb.

Oh, goody. Another quest.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.