I love finding government services with websites that are actually useful. The Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation has such a site at http://www.lacity.org/SAN. There you can find information on the all of the services they provide and submit service request forms in case you missed a trash pickup, need new containers, etc.
The service of most interest to me is their Bulky Item Collection. I’m selling my mom’s house but to sell it, I have to fix it up. And to fix it up, I have to empty it. Not a small task, considering that my mom is a very impressive, very Filipino one-woman shopping machine. In clearing out the garage, I’ve filled a 4-cubic-meter dumpster and three 60-gallon trash cans with trash. I’ve also boxed up and donated another 4 ft. x 4 ft. x 20 ft. worth of stuff. I have yet to apply my DTK (Donate, Trash, Keep) process to the interior of the house.
The 4-cubic-meter dumpster cost $160. It was worth it, since I needed it at the last minute and the company came through for me, but I can’t afford to keep DTK’ing that way. So, I looked at LA BoS’s Bulky Item Collection as a possible source of hope. Everyone I spoke to said that that sort of pickup had to be a one-time-a-year thing but I called them today (1-800-773-2489) and it turns out that it’s unlimited. That’s right, unlimited. I could schedule a pickup every week if I wanted. They only require that you submit a list of the things they need to pick up with your request.
I am jubilant!