Although clearly spelled out on the garbage schedule that Special Collection Day, also known as Large Item Pick-up Day, is not a “Clean-up” day, we all know it is.

And exactly one week after pick-up started on Gabriola, I stood at my open kitchen window, listening to the screech, roar, and crash of the special vehicles as they inched their way to my house. Would everything be hauled away, or would I be left with one of those embarrassing yellow tags that might just as well say: Nice try, but no cigar!

            I hadn’t intended to put anything out at all. We had paid twice this past winter to have piles of “stuff”, mostly construction waste, removed. What more could we possibly have? But what started out as a few plastic flowerpots became a respectable pile of broken patio umbrellas, a leaky rubber boat, wooden oars that were bought in a stupid moment at some yard sale (Perhaps to row the leaky boat?), and an equally leaky garden hose.  I wanted to play this musical chairs game too.

            Because as the week progressed, I couldn’t help but notice stuff moving from pile to pile, even street to street, always neatly re-disposed on someone else’s pile.  An oar from our pile was seen a day later several blocks away, perhaps taken by the same person who left behind a screen door in our pile. A rather attractive suitcase appeared briefly, and while I debated using it for an end table, it was snatched. Proving once again that if you snooze, you loose.

            I passed a nice looking lawn mower one day, but then I noticed a gardener taking a break. Whoops! Guess you have to watch out what you leave by the side of the road; we garbage pickers can be swift.

And then someone drove up and took away a neighbour’s entire pile. Was there something wrong with my junk? I can’t believe that this whole thing was giving me a sense of low self-esteem. Which was why I obtained great pleasure to find that by the day of our actual pick-up, only a few items were left, including that screen door.

            I couldn’t help but reach several conclusions based upon my observations over the week: from the large number of fold-out cots at the side of the roads, no one is encouraging houseguests anymore; washing machines apparently sprout legs during the night, as I noticed every morning they seemed to get closer and closer to the middle of the road; and some brave souls did what many of us have probably wanted to do over the years, throw out a photocopier, but I’m pretty sure that this might be stretching the definition of a “household” item.

I was reminded of my childhood in a small town in Ontario. On garbage days, as we walked home for lunch, we would scope out any worthy junk. We would wolf down our soup and sandwich and head out with a wagon in tow, picking up any good stuff we could use to build a fort: broken tables and chairs, cushions, scraps of wood, dirty magazines. (Just kidding!)

I was really getting into the swing of the game, when one day on my walk, I spotted a stained glass window, which a friend convinced me would look cute in our garden. I picked it up, just in case she was right, and began the long walk home over some treacherous terrain. I was rewarded for my labours when we ran into a woman who really loved the window, and I was happy to pass it along to her. Now that was a worthy find.

When II heard the collection trucks early one morning, I began fretting. It seemed to be taking an eternity for them to get down to our house. Obviously, examining every item. It felt like all the times I had stood in a long customs line-up, knowing I was over my limit and carrying a bottle of probably not acceptable souvenir sand, praying that the customs officer would be in a forgiving mood. Was there anything our there that could be construed as construction material? What if they didn’t take the screen door; it wasn’t even mine!

But they did; they took everything, even the screen door. If only the rest of my Spring-cleaning could be this much adventure.