Garbage is Genetic

Hubby and I had been married a few years when we were living in Abilene, Texas. He was in graduate school, and I was teaching full-time and also had a part-time job. Now, his program was difficult, I admit. He had to learn dead languages, read a multitude of thick, ugly books, and listen to old men drone on and on. But all I asked him to do was two things. Would he please do the laundry- which meant going to the apartment complex laundry room- and would he take out the trash.

After a while, I gave up on the laundry. I had some hours free on Saturdays and he needed to study, but I was adamant about the trash. I mean, I was only asking him to do one thing!

So when the trash piled up over the bin and onto the floor, I kept my mouth shut and waited. He didn't empty it. Finally, one night while I washed dishes, I blurted, "Aren't you ever going to take out the trash?!"

He was genuinely shocked to see that the trash needed taken out. He is such a focused person that the trash was not on his radar. After that I worried less about how the house looked, because he certainly didn't have any idea that the house even existed.

 Fast forward about eighteen years, and the picture above is what you get. The trash obviously needed to be taken out, but #1 balanced a pie container on top, since there obviously was more room! I literally have to force the boys to take trash out of their rooms, even though the bin is overflowing onto the floor. "It doesn't need taken out JUST yet," they explain. When I got back from my two weeks away, I informed #2 that the trash in his room absolutely was full enough and needed to go!

We filled this huge dumpster last month with trash from our barn and yard. It was about 5 feet tall and I think 14 feet long. Yes, that's a lot of trash, and we still have more! Mostly we put in wood from tearing down a shed and a fort.
In the last few weeks I have been inundated with trash from fellow homeschoolers and church members. I wish I had a big dumpster where I could throw away all of the negativity, selfishness, greed, and spite. But I can't throw away the people that I love, so I am stuck with garbage. Just like my sons following the footsteps of their father, I guess these people are following the footsteps of all of the people before them. Garbage is genetic.