We have always had it in the garage, but I have to say, it gets pretty stinky, making the garage stinky. Also, we have so much stuff in our garage (right now lots of construction stuff --- I know you can relate and then some) that the trashcans which are right by the door, deep in the garage get trapped and we have to rearrange on trash day to get them out ---- what a pain!

We never considered doing anything else though and now that you mention it, if I had an area outside that was hidden, I wouldn't mind that solution. My S-I-L used to live in NJ and they had it outside --- I remember seeing people out walking their dogs, picking up the poop and walking up driveways to drop the bag in their trashcan since it was outside. So, I suppose some would treat it like a public can, but if you could hide it from view...). No experience on the animal front though....

We have ours in the garage and always have. I live in Florida and even with the heat of the summer trash only smells if there is something like fish shells or something I took out of the fridge that was unidentifiable! It is in our homeowners regulations that the trash has to be shielded from seeing it from the road. Our neighbors have left there behind a lattice fence with shrubbery. One night we saw a mother black bear and cub dining. I'd rather keep it inside and only have to put it in once. As long as it is covered and closed tight I don't notice a smell.

Ours goes from the kitchen to the garage to outside when the garage one gets filled up. I am in Texas and don't know how this will work smell-wise in the summer.

It's usually the can that ends up smelling. DH washes it out a few times a year, out in the driveway.

We've always kept our cans inside the garage also.

We keep ours in the garage. It only smells beyond the can if the lid doesn't get put back on tightly.

Totally Confused

Our city has trash cans that our critters can't get into ie. possums, raccoons, coyotes. No bears in these parts. We keep trash cans outside. That doesn't keep the humans from rummaging for recyclables, though, and they do, a few times a week.

There is no rule they have to be hidden, however, I would rather they be and that's the plan. They are on the side of the driveway away from the house, but can be seen from the street. Unfortunately, there is not alot of room, there, for a shed of some sort. At least, they are behind a tree.

Bin is in the garage - if we left it outside, it would get raided by the very intelligent and agile raccoons hereabouts.

Because we compost most food waste, there's usually only one bag of trash in the bin per week anyway. It only usually gets smelly if there are chicken bones in there, in summer.

Ours is one of those big bins that is picked up by an apparatus on the truck. Huge! It is outside in a shed that is about 50 feet from the house. It would be easier if it were in the carport, but then one of the cars wouldn't fit. So once a week I pull the big bin over tree roots and then down the rest of the way to the road. I think having the bin a bit of a distance from the house, with the gauntlet of shoe-grabbing tree roots on the way causes me to pack every garbage bag within an inch of its life. I don't like walking out there, especially in the dark!

When we lived in 1920s houses in town we didn't have garages or carports. So the can(s) were usually on the side of the house, next to the house on the driveway side, nestled in between some shrubs. In our last 1920s house, the garbage pickup was from the alley rather than from the street. So those cans pretty much just stayed against the back fence on the alley and we carried the garbage out to them.

Ours is in the garage. I usually am taking out the bag from the kitchen and one from the laundry room at the same time.We put the 13-gallon bags into larger bags in the cans, which means they are double bagged. Occasionally in the summer we have stinky garbage from chicken packaging etc but its not that bad. Once we had a cookout and kids threw plates etc in a can that didn't have a lid and the bag was left untied - 3 days later we had maggots! uugh! (first time I had ever seen them!) So now I'm diligent about tying and double bagging.

Funny this should come up. DH and I were just discussing it yesterday! We keep ours at ground level next to the steps of the side porch. It's not very large and we don't use that side to go out anyway. [We have a back door going to the garage in the other side yard.] In the new house our main floor will be upstairs. The garage will be on the ground level below. I suggested we put the garbage and recycling cans in the back under the deck/porch in a lattice screened spot. I don't know if any odors will be apparent since it's outside and doesn't seem to be smelly now. He was ok with it. We will be figuring those things out as we actually start getting closer. We are in a waiting mode while the permits, etc. are being gotten. Oh, well. More time to pick the brains of the GW kitchen gurus!

We keep ours in the garage--2 large plastic bins with attached lids. Not as big as the bins that trucks pick up to dump. I bought these from HD. I love these bins. Our lids used to get thrown down by the garbage men and sometimes blown down the street if there was a high wind. These bins keep most of the odors contained as the lids are always closed, but if I'm throwing out something that might smell bad (e.g., packaging from raw chicken), I double bag it and make sure both bags are tied very tight. Grass clippings are kept outside on the side of the garage.

We live in SoCal, so our garbage cans are kept outside in our side yard. Husband can't stand to look at the BLUE, GREEN and BLACK plastic cans, so he had a small fence built around the cans and the air conditioner (trash can height and open top.)

Looks good most of the time, but...it's one more thing that needs upkeep. Painting the fence, and contantly fixing the hinges and latches because, perhaps, they warp and swell in the rain and are never quite fixed correctly?

Yes, it does rain here in SoCal, then it turns hot, then cold, so our wood fences get very confused.

We keep ours just outside the garage. We have a small one-car garage so there's just no space for them in there. We have an overgrown bush that partially hides them, but anyone can see them if you're looking for them. We haven't had problems with animals, but they have blown over to moved around with the wind. The lids fit pretty tightly though so it's not been a problem.

In our previous house we kept them in the garage. I don't remember them smelling up the garage much, but it's just the 2 of us and we don't have a whole lot of trash. I don't have a strong preference either way. If you don't need the space, and don't notice the smell, why not just keep it in the garage?

Our garage is on the side of our house but we don't have room for the trash cans/recycling bins. We bought this big rubbermaid-type of shed that is slightly taller than our trash cans. Inside side by side, we can fit two trash cans, and two recycle bins. The "shed" top lifts up in two pieces or you can open it from the front. I suppose it could be heavy to lift the full garbage can out but most of the time dh takes out the trash, but the times I've had it, I could get the trash cans out with no problem. We have the shed up against the house to the right of the garage. It's not exactly ideal, but you can't see it when driving up to our house b/c my car in the driveway blocks it from view. It also contains the smell.

During the winter the garbage and recycling cans are in the garage so they can be brought curbside easily. Once it gets warmer they are moved outside behind the attached garage. I used to leave them outside year-round, but that requires shoveling the walkway around the garage.

Last year I got lazy and left them in the garage into the early summer. Even with the lid on, some flies were attracted and then migrated into the house from the garage - door is off the family room. As soon as the cans were moved outside, the issue resolved. This year the cans are going back outside as soon as the snow melts.

We don't have any closed outdoor storage, and we do have animals (raccoons, bears, dogs, ravens) so ours stays in the kitchen bin till the night before garbage day, then we add to it from all over the house to make a bagful and put it in the front porch till early on garbage morning.

In the summer it does smell a bit, but that's mostly because we only make one bagful every 3 weeks or so and the early stuff has plenty of time to "ripen".

Our garbage cans are kept outside. We have a detached garage behind our house, and the cans and recycle bins are on the side that's away from the house, so they aren't visible from the house. There's a fence near there that divides our property from the neighbors' yard, and their garage and cans are back there too, so really not visible to anyone unless you're taking out the garbage.

We have cans with lids that 'lock' on using the handles. The racoons got into our old cans a couple of times and made a mess, but the locking handles have solved that.

We've never had anyone (except us) use our can for dog bags, but then again it's about a 90'-100' walk from the sidewalk to the cans.

I never thought about keeping the cans in the garage. I like having them outside, even when I have to brush the snow off.

It depends on creatures since we are in the country, more or less. :) I haven't lived in this house in spring/summer, so we'll see. In the winter, the can is living outside because of mice. I don't want food smells encouraging them to go in our garage! It would be more convenient inside, though. I imagine I will want the can out of the garage in the summer for the same reason (for flies.)

We keep ours outside and have never had any problems, excepting moving the barn kitties, who like to sit on top of it :)

It's a large, wheeled garbage container, provided by the garbage company, with an attached lid. We've never seen any mice or other critters in or around it...but again, that might be the barn kitties!

I never notice any smell, even in the hot summers, but I would imagine it would get pretty bad inside a closed space, like a garage.

Kitchen to garage with trash pickup twice per week. Sometimes we don't even have enough trash to bother putting the can put on pickup day. The bags from the kitchen go into a large wheeled plastic can.

We keep ours in the garage, as does all of our nearby neighbors except those living next door, they keep the cans next to their house (the side near our gate) it looks like a trash dump even right after trash day and smells bad all the time. We only bought this house a year ago and have tried to be tolerant but I'm about out of patience.

We used one of these. I find Walpole to be a bit overpriced, but they do have very good quality.

Here is a link that might be useful: encl for trash

That reminds me, I have to recommed our "diaper genie". Our old house was three stories, and almost fours stories in the back. Our nursery was on the second floor, so pretty high yp. The nursery has a bathroom with a window, that was right above the driveway/garage in the back. DH put a trashcan right under the window. When we changed a diaper, we bagged it like a diaper genie, then threw it out the window into the waiting trash can below! LOL

Ours is in the garage too since we have a funky 1.5 car garage (= two 1920 cars!) so the cans fit nicely along the sides, but several neighbors have built enclosures like the one mtnrdredux linked that look really nice. Our city has an ordinance that you aren't allowed to leave your cans where they can be seen from the street, so our house (and some others nearby) have little "nooks" carved out that are screened by plants for the cans. I just never saw the point of keeping them there when we have room in the garage, since we do have raccoon problems. The only thing we have a smell issue with is dog waste, so that stays in a remote corner of the backyard in a bin till trash day. Green waste has never been a problem though I initially expected it to be---though it also rarely gets hot where I live, and we put that out every week even if we don't have a full bin. The bins (from the garbage co.) are pretty heavy duty, though.