15 Aug Bin There, Done That

Susan Macciocca comes clean about her two-year-old son’s obsession with dirty work.

My son Eddy has a thing about rubbish bins. It is not an idle interest; it’s a consuming passion. He loves bins the way a Collingwood supporter loves the black-and-white jumper. He likes full bins. He likes empty bins. He is equally partial to the regular waste bin and the recycling variety.

The bin thing started when he was 18 months old, and he accompanied us as we took out the rubbish. He would inspect the bin contents, surprised and delighted each time at the discovery of smelly rubbish. Then, he showed an interest in pushing out the rubbish bin with us. Not knowing where this would lead, we encouraged him.

The bin thing gathered momentum, and his bin-related activities broadened: as well as the excitement of the bin-emptying day, he regularly audited the whereabouts and well-being of our neighbour’s bins. Eddy demonstrated a fine eye for detail in his monologue about the bins in our street, pointing out the broken lid on Number 3, the wobbly wheel on Number 6, and the puzzling fact that the lady at Number 20 had not put her bins out this week.

Now he is two, and his favourite bin activity is to line up all the bins in the street on the day prior to collection so that they stand to attention at the kerb, neat as a regiment of soldiers. Then he moves all of the bins so that they line up against the fence. And back again to the kerb. This ritual is repeated in several streets around our home for as long as I can stand it. As my husband drives home from work, he can map where Eddy and I have been by the bins that have been ‘Eddied’ in the street. Moving each bin is quite strenuous for a two-year-old, but he beams as he heaves them around. When Eddy surveys a street and sees bins lined up at the curb, he glows with happiness. All is right in his world.

The bin thing was funny when it started. It made a good dinner-party story. Then it became a bit of a nuisance: Eddy would rather look at bins in the street than go to the park or play with other kids. Slowly, Eddy’s thing for bins crept from the periphery to the centre of our lives. It began to really bother me. On hot days, the smell was odious. On cold days, the chill settled on me as I watched while Eddy moved the last few bins perfectly into place. I became an accomplice to speed up the process, reluctantly moving the bins under Eddy’s direction. My six-month-old daughter gazed at us from the pram as we worked, and I started to worry about the effect of all this bin exposure on her developing brain. Would she grow up thinking the bins were part of our immediate family? Would she develop her own bin attachment?

I worried too about Eddy’s thing with bins. Did his obsession with lining up bins reflect an autistic trait? I sought advice from a friend who is a child psychologist. She reassured me that two-year-olds are prone to developing passionate interests in quirky objects and that while Eddy did seem to have an orderly streak, he did not display autistic behaviours in other facets of his life. She reminded me that my husband is very orderly. This was all very true and made sense. But what were we to do about the bins?

It took us a while to figure it out. We tried banning them. Too exhausting. We realised that if we wanted a bin-free existence, we would have countless bin battles a day. With Eddy already challenged by adjusting to the arrival of a baby sister, I had quite enough triggers for battles in my day. If we really wanted a bin-free life, we would have to wage a bin war. We didn’t have the energy. And I wasn’t sure we would win.

We tried rationing Eddy to two bin visits per day. Impossible. At two, Eddy did not have the capacity to understand a time frame as long as a minute, let alone a day.

We tried distraction. This was occasionally successful if the distracting object was more attractive to Eddy than a bin. The list of these better-than-bin objects was very short: me, my husband, my father-in-law and chocolate. So it worked every so often, but there were more bin opportunities in a day than times I could summon his grandfather or administer chocolate.

And so we resigned ourselves to let the bin thing run its course. Within reason. On days when I couldn’t stand the thought of a bin, I would put my foot down and deal with the tantrum that followed. Or else we wouldn’t leave the house.

I have become bin-savvy. I consider the garbage collection day when planning a trip to the park. How many bins will we encounter along the way? If there are too many, we will never get there. We avoid streets with blocks of flats and extra bins per toddler step. When we visit friends, I check the placement of their bins as we arrive. Has Eddy seen them? Could he safely play with them without getting out onto the road?

The bin thing has invaded my subconscious. Pausing to catch my breath as I complete a lap of the local pool, I think how Eddy would love the extra-large bins at the poolside. I realise I have my very own bin obsession.

We get some funny looks from the neighbours. The weirdest looks are reserved for me when a neighbour assumes the bin fetish is mine and that I force my poor two-year-old into slave labour to carry out my dirty work. I feel compelled to explain, “He just loves the bins,” and they smile uncertainly at me and sympathetically at Eddy. I am left waiting for the phone call from child protection.

Other neighbours know Eddy as Bin Boy and joke that he will grow up a fine garbo. I smile through gritted teeth. The man from Number 22 huffs a little under his breath as he retrieves his bin from outside Number 26, where Eddy has neatly placed it. He doesn’t smile. I expect he had a thing about neatly arranging bins when he was two.

There have been upsides. We have three new friends. They arrive every Friday at 5.30 am, resplendent in fluorescent orange and tattoos. They smile and wave at Eddy, and he is entranced as they heave rubbish into the back of the truck. They wave goodbye and continue on their early morning journey, and I wonder if they meet other fascinating toddlers and bin-weary parents along the way.

More than anything, Eddy’s thing for bins is conclusive proof that my life is not about me. I hope it won’t be about bins for too much longer. Maybe my daughter will have a less smelly obsession when her turn comes. And I can at least be sure that we will never forget to put out our bins.

Illustrations by Ron Monnier