Bob

Rubbish bags get horrendously horrid within a week in the summer though.

WEBlue

Town trash & recycling pickup in Falmouth is very good however. You don't need to purchase dump stickers unless you have huge unwieldy items that you can't sell, give away, or just have disappear when you leave it by your kerbside. We have a close relative there in Falmouth & have visited a lot, sometimes for long periods... so I speak for only that town.

Rubbish is collected every week, & recycling every other week.

Now snow, that can be a problem in Falmouth. The last two winters were bad, & snow removal took a while down some residential-only streets. (Major roads, no problem.) Sidewalks are often not plowed, or spotty removal by householders or businesses. It's hit or miss because--as the others have said--they aren't very used to lots of snow.

What Falmouth--as well as all the Cape & Islands--have in spades is Nor'easters, those horrible howling wind storms with rain that results in flooding (near the sea & some small roads) & downed trees & bad power outages! Please be prepared for all this if you move to the Cape! Especially Falmouth, where the husband & I have experienced wild storms first hand.

robin1234

They can do. A lot of folks keep trash in the freezer. (A dedicated trash freezer preferably.)

kins

I think you're trying to do too many complicated things at once.

You're trying to time having a baby with moving to the US. But having a baby on a particular date is not straightforward unless you're lucky, and visa processing times are unpredictable. There's every chance you'll get your visa but baby won't arrive for another 8 months, or you'll have your baby but the visa won't arrive for another 6-12 months.

I get that you want to live off your maternity leave, but I think your chances of actually getting all the dates to coincide are limited.

The idea of popping back and forth between the US and UK is a really bad one - the border patrol agents will get suspicious.

I doubt your travel insurance will cover all the health checks and vaccinations your baby will need. When you have a new baby, you really need to have a good relationship with some kind of medical practice, as you'll be seeing them pretty regularly. For example, when I had a baby, I saw the midwife almost daily for the first couple of weeks (problems with feeding), then every week or two for weighing, then every few months for vaccinations and checkups.

Plus moving back and forth between countries with a young baby will drive you crazy, and you'll be maintaining two houses. It all sounds like a stressful recipe for disaster to me.

I would focus on one thing, or another, but I wouldn't rely on getting your visa in just the right time to move to the US with a brand new baby so that you can live off your maternity leave.

Sorry to be a downer.

Pulaski

I always wonder what my neighbours are throwing away as I drive past their bins out for collection every week with the lid propped open because it is full to overflowing.

We don't even fill the bin under the sink each week, and when it gets full-ish I take the pedal bin liner to the bathrooms and empty the bins into the kitchen bin liner. The bag isn't usually very full even if I empty the bin under the sink every couple of weeks. ...... We do sometimes take meat scraps or bones and stuff them in a soda cup and put them in the bin at the gas station. Depending on the season/heat and whether I can be bothered, our 96gal wheelie bin gets dragged to the curb every 1-3 months.

We put out our recycling bin for the scheduled collection every other week and it is usually fairly full, of glass, paper, cardboard, and plastic bottles/containers, and we sometimes have to hold recycling back for the next collection.

Bob

We recycle the crap out of things which I take to the dump monthly and we barely fill half a rubbish bag a week so we chuck it out with our neighbours who have private collection weekly and I chuck them a six pack every now and again. Still, after a week, in the summer, it smells rancid. And all the veg stuff goes out in the compost.

Ellem86

Perhaps we are trying to do too much! It seems like moving to the US would be much easier with an employer dealing with all the difficult bits for you!

WEBlue

We're similar to you & Bob--lots of recycling in the blue bin for every pick-up (sometimes having to hold a bit back for the next pick-up), but only a meager, half-full small bag for the rubbish collection....

I do think my neighbours who have trash spilling out of their rubbish bins are not properly recycling. One house fills their blue recycling bin with bottles--many bottles! no room for much else, and then their rubbish bags are full of unrinsed manky plastic & metal food containers...NOT allowed but they do it anyway. I know this because foxes rip open those bags if they can't be closed inside the trash cans properly.... Then that garbage ends up scattered down our end of the street.

Mallory

We put most food scraps down the garbage disposal. What doesn't go down there, bones etc, we put in plastic shopping bags, and place in the top freezer of outside fridge. This gets thrown in garbage can weekly. Have to keep roaches away! Recycling gets picked up every other week. We wash out food cans and stuff to keep everything clean until picked up.

Bob

Our garbage disposal is shit. It couldn't mince a bellend even if one tried getting kinky with it.

And we don't have room for a spare fridge. There was a old fridge in the garage but it died. I just about use it to cold brew larger in the winter as it keeps a steady temp in the winter, but not much use in the summer.

Either way, it's all a chore. Our last town, it was a couple bucks a bag for the town bags and they were shite, would rip at the slightest thing and couldn't hold anything and not many stores sold the things so it was a real hassle.

kodokan

This all sounds fantastically complicated. It's like when we lived in Switzerland and had to recycle almost everything by taking it ourselves to the village recycling center, and separate it all out into eleventy-two skips; meanwhile, the tiny amount of general trash went out in a highly taxed bag.

No such system here. In AZ, we had three huge wheelie bins for trash/ mixed recycling/ yard waste, all collected weekly. Here in OH, we can put out pretty much anything - huge stacks of flattened cardboard boxes, small trees, kitchen appliances or furniture - and off it all goes in the weekly pick-up.

Pulaski

Whenever I moving boxes (from friends or colleagues) assuming those were your flattened cardboard boxes, I sell them on Craigslist. I think I got about a dollar a box for 18"×18"×24" boxes, and about $6 for a wardrobe box.

I sell appliances at the local scrap yard, and take along any other scrap steel that I have lying around - everything from soup cans to bed frames, chairs, or paint cans filled with old nails, bolts and screws. A few years ago I could easily get $40-$60 for a load of scrap iron and steel in my truck. The last time I went I got just about enough for lunch at Arby's for little Miss P and me.

robin1234

This raises a question, are garbage disposals compatible with septic tanks? On Cape Cod, virtually everyone has septic tank drainage. (I believe some of the towns have mains drainage, but only for the densely developed town center area.)

Clearly, anything you send down from a garbage disposal is going to end as sludge in the tank, thus decreasing the liquid capacity of the tank, and reducing the time between maintenance visits (having a contractor come in and empty the tank and possibly check on the traps and make sure everything is OK.)

In fact, looking at the design specifications for the new septic system installed at our Cape Cod house before we purchased, to bring the house up to Title V compliance, one of the notes states: "This system is not designed for the use of a garbage disposal."

My guess is that the septic tank maintenance folks will tell you that it's perfectly fine to use a disposal - it keeps their business busy, pumping out tanks every two years instead of every six or so years!

Pulaski

Hooking up a garbage disposal to a septic tank drain system isn't smart but it is perfectly possible.

The house next door to Pulaski Manor was built in 1990 for a retired couple, who lived there until 2006, after the husband died. At some point (possibly from new) they had a garbage disposal installed, which fed the septic tank, but as there were only the two of them living there, in a 3 bed, 2,000sqft house, with septic tank sized appropriately for a fairly large house, there was never a problem with the septic system.

The house changed hands in 2006 and the new owners removed the garbage disposal having expressed some surprise that one had been hooked up to a septic drain. The septic tank wasn't pumped until 2012, so after more than 20 years (creeping juniper planted by the original owners when they first moved in, was growing over the tank hatch and it clearly hadn't been disturbed) so while I would certainly not recommend installing a garbage disposal in a house with a septic system, my vicarious experience with the house next door is that it can be done without necessarily causing problems.

Nutmegger

All food prep waste -- veg. parings, etc. -- goes into the compost bin. If we didn't do it ourselves, the town has now instituted a composting program, and provides special bags and collection bins. The town picks up the recycling weekly, but it is either private contractor or DIY for the rest of the garbage. We opt for DIY and take it in every few weeks. We have two bins that are kept in the garage because there's too much wildlife outdoors, but it really doesn't smell unless the lid is removed!