The Beauty of a Dumpster

Kellin Scott | April 14, 2025

Imagine a dumpster. Ugly, maybe stinky, takes up practically the whole driveway. The drop-off and pick-up process is loud and clanky. But it’s empty - a blank canvas. A dumpster’s entire purpose is to operate as a giant trash can. When you go through items and consider which ones to keep and which to get rid of, you will likely end up with a good bit of stuff in the latter category. You may also have a collection of items that you don’t enjoy keeping, but would feel guilty throwing away. It is fair to want to donate or sell items instead of throwing them away, but what happens when your time and effort trying to do so fails? You are left with a house full of things that don’t belong. If items are too large to fit in the garbage can, or would take up the entire thing, they are extra stuck in your space! A dumpster gives you the opportunity to knock these items out in one go.

Humans have a tendency to fill the space we have. This is why grocery stores have large carts; you are more likely to purchase more items with a cart than you are with a small basket or just your arms. This is true of our houses - moving from a small house to a larger house, you are likely to purchase more furniture to fill the empty space. Luckily for us, this also applies to dumpsters! You have this large space to fill, so start finding items to put in it! Of course, this doesn’t mean empty your closet and feed the dumpster every shirt you own (unless you hate all of your shirts I suppose). It means you have the freedom to go into every room and ask yourself, “what doesn’t belong here anymore?” You can take items that you no longer love and put them in the dumpster. No rationing garbage can space, no trips to the dump - for the average Joe, everything you’d like to get rid of can fit in one dumpster. Guilt-inducing decisions can be battled with the knowledge that you are feeding the stuff-hungry dumpster. There is no consequence for not filling the dumpster - you’ve already paid for it. There are, however, consequences to keeping items you dread in your space. The presence of a dumpster can be the push that causes you to purge the things in your house that bring you down. Debbie-downers go in the dumpster.

Dumpsters give us the ability to start over. Take all of the things you don’t love, get them out of your space, and enjoy what remains. When we have the clean slate of a space full of only things that bring us joy, we are empowered to make wiser decisions in the future. We will learn to say “no” to things that will not bring happiness in our homes.