Style Your Trash

When we started our kitchen remodel, we knew we wanted everything in the new space to be both practical and stylish – and I do mean everything. Like, even the rubbish.

The problem with that, of course, is that trash is just not that sexy, really, is it? In our very first kitchen, for instance, our waste disposal “system” consisted of a plastic bag hung under the sink: there literally wasn’t enough room for anything else, so we’d use that for non-recyclables, and take everything else out to the recycling bin in the garden. (Don’t worry, it was a tiny kitchen, so it wasn’t exactly a long walk…) When we moved house, we “upgraded” to two grey plastic bins, which were stuffed into one of the cupboards. I quickly came to hate that cupboard – mostly because it almost immediately became a battleground over which Terry and I would fight near-daily duels.

See, Terry is somewhat obsessive about recycling: as in, if he visits someone’s home, and happens to see them throw away something that could be recycled, he will actually reach into the trash to pull it out again. I’m just this second starting to realise why no one’s invited us round for a while, actually. In our own home, he will meticulously divide everything he’s throwing out into two neat piles… and then he will ram them into those depressing grey bins, almost as if he’s playing some bizarre game of rubbish-based Tetris, where the aim is to fill every possible space with another item of trash.

I, meanwhile, am a neat freak. So, while I’m also keen on doing my bit to help the environment, every time I go to put something in the trash, and realise that it’s already so tightly packed with cardboard and plastic that you couldn’t get so much as a HAIR into it, I will break out into a cold sweat. OK, not really. Sort of, though.

The “bin cupboard”, then, as it was not-so-fondly known, has always been a source of marital strife for us, so when we remodelled the kitchen, we decided to just not have one. Instead, we have these:

Which just goes to show that trash CAN be stylish after all: WHO KNEW?

These are by Brabantia, and they got top marks from Terry, because, as well as being made from 40% high-grade recyclable materials, with 98% of both bin and packaging being recyclable after use, for every one sold, Brabantia also donates to The Ocean Cleanup, to help support their mission to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. We got two in the largest size (so I’m not constantly having to run outside to empty out Terry’s Tetris Trash), and we went for contrasting colours, partly because our theme for the new kitchen involves using a range of different “accent” colours, but also to help remind us which is which. (ONE of us isn’t very good at this. I will let you guess which one of us it is…)

They got top marks for me, meanwhile, because, well, they look cute. Which is honestly not something I’d expected from my rubbish bins. These, however, come in 16 different colours and finishes (Which, yes, made it pretty hard to choose which we’d go for…), and I like the fact that they have a really simple, modern design, which still manages to look a little bit retro, thanks to the colours. Oh, and they’re not actually going to be kept in the living room, by the way: it was just trickier than anticipated to get a photo of them in their actual home, which is right next to the back door:

As you can see, the kitchen is now more or less finished: what you can’t see from these photos, however, is all of the remaining mess that’s just out of the frame in all of them, so the final reveal will have to wait until later in the week – fingers crossed!

[This post was sponsored by Brabantia]