You go to throw away a used napkin, and you see that the trash bin in your kitchen is full. Instead of emptying it, you shove the garbage down a little more so the napkin fits inside. Maybe instead of smashing the trash, you balance the napkin perfectly on top of the pile, feeling a sense of accomplishment.
After some time, that garbage starts to smell. You know you should take it out, but that requires too much effort, so you just shove it down again. It’s getting pretty packed in there, so you use your foot to stomp it into submission. You congratulate yourself for being such a skilled manual trash compactor.
You start to get fruit flies in your kitchen. They appear from nowhere as though they were brought into being by the rotting banana at the bottom of the bin. You ignore them and continue to smash it down.
You conclude that eventually, one of two things will happen:
- The fruit flies develop a taste for human flesh and attack you en masse, knocking you down, and they slowly gnaw off your face with their tiny insect mouths
- You take out the trash
You opt for #2. You decide to come at the trash head-on, confronting it with every ounce of willpower you have. As you start to take it out, you realize it’s going to be unpleasant and you really want to leave it there for another day. After weighing the upcoming discomfort against the risk of face-eating fruit flies, you soldier on.
You bend over and tie up the bag, which makes your lower back sore for a few seconds. You pull the bag out of the bin and discover there was a broken pickle jar in there that cut the plastic, so now there’s pickle juice leaking out of the bag. You carry the trash bag one-handed, holding a paper towel under the leaky spot. You decide to save time by not putting on your shoes, and you step in a puddle next to your garage. Now your foot is cold, and you need to change your socks. You figure out a way to open the big trash bin without setting down the bag, but you end up leaking pickle juice all over your jeans. Once back inside, you realize that there was too much time for fruit flies to accumulate, so now you’ll have to go to Target and buy a can of Raid to get rid of the stragglers.
Maybe you didn’t soldier on. Maybe you waited another day or two, letting the bag get heavier, leaking more pickle juice into the bin for you to clean up. You finally take out the trash, but it’s a much bigger pain in the ass than it would have been if you’d done it sooner.
The longer you wait, the harder it is, but guess what? You still end up with a clean trash bin, and that feels fucking amazing.
