I'm not sure we put it in anything. I think we dumped it in there loose. Either that or we put it in the paper grocery sacks.

Isn't that funny(not) i can't remember either,and i'm older than you,70. I do remember when i was a kid,my dad would dig holes in the backyard up towards the woods and bury some trash there.The rest the trash man picked up in the metal cans.

In the early 60's i lived in a building where we had incinerators,after that i think we used the brown grocery bags for garbage and washed the trash cans a lot.
Kathi

We had big metal trash cans outside, and dumped the inside trash cans into those. The trash men would come twice a week and carry those cans out to the truck and dump them. I remember that it was my job to wash out the kitchen trash can. It was nasty!

Plastic bags have made a dirty job a little more sanitary....

I'm 55 and I clearly remember (yes, there are still some of those cells floating around my brain) folding the tops of paper grocery sacks so they would stay open. That was placed inside a plastic receptacle of some sort. Wet stuff like went into an old coffee can.

Jodi-

In Delaware County PA where I grew up trash/garbage was just put into the cans unwrapped, garbage was kept separate from trash and taken to pig farms.

Sue

I know my grandmother always used the paper bags and wrapped the "wet" stuff in newspaper. My brother had the job of washing out the cans every week.

Trish

We had and still have a compost bin.

We had smallish garbage tin cans with tight lids. Garbage was just dumped in. I remember my mother and grandmother hosing them down with White Cap Pine oil or Lysol after the garbage men emptied the can.

We had a kitchen sink strainer that sat in the corner of the sink for wet garbage. All peels and coffee grounds went in there, and at the end of the meal, they were dumped into the center of several sheets of newspaper and we folded it up tight in that and threw it in the trash. Grease was saved in a can and when we had several, we took them to the butcher, and the fat was turned into soap by someone. Mom often used the morning's bacon grease to fry other food in, especially eggs for breakfast and potatoes.

We used brown grocery bags. Wet garbage was wrapped in newspaper.

I grew up on the farm. Food garbage went outside to the dog(s)...fruit went to the pigs. All other was put in the white waste basket with a paper sack in it. That was burnt in a wire area in a clearing in the grove....not sure what thet do at the farm now...I think you have to get a permit to burn in that county. All cans and bottles (didn't have many as mom canned just about everything!) went outside to a big old oil drum thing, and that was taken to the can pile (back in the woods) a couple of times a year.

I can't remember that far back :o( or :o)

Growing up in the 60's, my family used the paper grocery bags for "dry" trash, opened up and set inside a plastic trashcan that was only a little bigger than the paper bag itself. "Wet" vegetable peelings or nasty stuff would be wrapped in several layers of newspaper and taken directly to the metal trashcan outside.

My grandparents would take their kitchen scraps to their compost pile near the garden, ages before "composting" was even a word, I think!

So when did plastic trash bags take over ... early 80's maybe???

I'm thinkin the trash bags came mid 70's but geesh I can't remember...just glad they did...Oh the joys of cleaning up those trash cans...ICK..I can remember that smell...

My mother always used brown paper bags from the grocery store. She stood the unfolded bags in the wastebaskets throughout the house, and folded over the top when they got full. When I was a kid, she saved the plastic bags that carrots came in and "recycled" them as holders for wet washcloths whenever she took us kids in the car. I can remember eating at outdoor hamburger joints, then Mom wiping our faces and hands with the wet washcloth. She was really ahead of her time!

Took a while...but I just remembered.
Garbage was neatly wrapped up in newspaper (back then, everyone read at least one newspaper), then tossed in the garbage pail.

as a kid in grade school, early 60's I remember helping out in the lunch room at school... one of jobs was lining the big metal cans with newspapers everyday... sheet by sheet, folded over the top and layered down the sides and bottom. it stayed there, I remember. At home, I think my Mom wrapped wet in paper also, or a paper bag and put out in metal cans. Dry went out to the incererator for awhile, then garbage can when we couldn't burn anymore. It was my brothers job to take care of the garbage so I don't know if they cleaned them out or not. I am sure my mom made them though. She had a very clean house.

We used the brown paper bags also....but my mom saved the bread wrappers for the wet stuff. And she always had an empty can for the grease.

We used brown paper bags for the kitchen, but I don't remember doing anything special with the wet stuff. We had a metal garbage can for outside. We must've filled it so quickly, since there was no recycling back then! Where did our yard debris go?

Sheryl

Brown paper bags for dry stuff and newspaper or bread wrappers (plastic) for wet stuff.At my grandmother's we threw veggie scraps and peelings and bread scraps to the chickens.LOL In the 60's when I had my first baby I would turn bread wrappers wrong side out,to shake out all the crumbs,and use it for wet and soiled diapers when traveling.No disposable diapers back then.I would also put wet washcloths in them. I also invented wet wipes!LOL When paper towels came into "being" I would fold them in squares,wet them down and put them in a bread wrapper for the diaper bag.When traveling I would lay the washcloth/paper towel bags on the dash of the car so they would be warm from the sun.
Garbage/trash men.........wonder if that is PC now days?? LOL

I was raised on a small farm. In the 1940s, we did not have a lot of trash. Table scraps went to the dogs and pigs. Excess vegetables and trimmings such as carrot tops, cores, etc. were given to the pigs, except for some seeds - some of these can be bad for an animal's health. Peach pits and other fruit pits can be posionous. We never made a study to find out which ones were bad and which were not so bad - We just threw all pits away anywhere we did not tread. That's why random fruit tree sprouts could be found in fence rows. Some were dropped on the graveled roads. Pits and apple cores are readily biodegradeable and can be tossed anywhere in out of the way places. What little wet scraps could buried in a shallow hole in the garden. Everyone had a vegetable garden. It was prudent to cover the wet stuff with a layer of dirt to else it became a breeding ground for flies, and flies of all kinds were the bane of farms. We burned dry trash once a week. Leftover chicken bones and other bones were incinerated with the dry trash. All fat from cooking was saved for food preparation. You haven't lived until you have tasted eggs fried in bacon fat. Corn popped in bacon fat has a decided flavor all of its own. (Today, we believe that foods prepared in high temperature animal fats are not so good for our health.) The fat was never left too long else it would become rancid. Overaged fat was simply poured on the ground in the garden - a thin layer of dirt over it would keep it from being tracked into the house.

Heated water for the Monday laundry was made over an open, wood fire in the chicken lot. Much of the trash was burned in this fire.

There were no plastic bags or ziplocks. Wrapping media of the day was wax-paper, butcher-paper (coarse brown paper in rolls), and newspaper. Sandwich bags were made of wax paper - all burnable.

Well, maybe it is time to go back to some of our old ways, seems to me we got along quite well without all this "PLASTIC' which is filling our landfill sites and causing such problems.

Intherain......I wonder too what we did with our yard debris, maybe someone can remember that too.