I've had mine for 5+ years. Yeah, sometimes, the drawer won't stay shut. It's just a matter of pulling the pedal forward a bit to make it meet the magnet better. I think the process of pushing it with your foot pushes it back a minute amount every day, or maybe one too-forceful push can knock it out of line. It's not a big deal though. Happens maybe once every 6-10 months and takes about 10 seconds to pull it back into place. The benefit of having a hands free pull out trash in the cabinets far far outweighs the occasional inconvenience IMO.

I bought the toe kicker, but my cabinet guy decided to ignore it. Basically, he didn't want to do the custom work that was required for me to use it--even though I kept asking, "can we please make this toe kicker work?" I'm ticked about it! I'm pretty sure it was designed for inset drawers. In that case, when the drawer/door is closed, it is closed all the way. In order to use it on an overlay unit, "closed" would indeed be about 1/16th of an inch. Also, the unit is a space hog behind the drawer (it is a couple inches long). I think this is why my cab guy didn't want to hassle with it. The trash box wasn't deep enough, and he would have needed to cut some of the back away... It has a very tight spring to it. You have to push it hard to click it. But I think it only opens an inch or so. Then you use your foot to pull the cab open. As it turns out, my cab opens so easily, I don't need the kicker. I can just use my pinky. If my husband ever installs it, I'll try to video it. Btw, the gizmo is about 5 bucks, but the shipping is more than that! Grrrr. I think it was about 12 bucks total. Maybe a bit more. Francy

I just don't see how it could possibly work. The way the foot pedal works is that the bungee is stretched out so always trying to relax. If it relaxes, the door opens. When closing the door, the bungee is stretched. The foot pedal magnet holds the bungee at a stretch when the door is closed. So, in order to close the door, you have to push it till the magnet catches. You have to follow through because if you let go before the magnet catches, the bungee will relax, thus opening the door. The soft close catches the drawer just before it closes and pulls the door the remaining inch or so till it shuts. It's pulling the drawer shut s-l-o-w-l-y. So what you would have is the soft close trying to pull the trash door shut while the bungee is trying to relax and open the door. Who's gonna win? My money is on the bungee. Because if you have soft close, you know that in the process of the drawer closing, you can always grab it and open it back up. The soft close is not going to fight you. As far as I can tell, ya gotta pick one or the other. My kitchen is now over 5.5 years old and has the soft close on all the drawers except the trash pull out where I have the pedal. I'm used to it. I don't think of my trash cabinet as the same as the other drawers. It's become second nature to me to just push it all the way shut, often times with my hip. You know, in the almost six years since the kitchen was completed, I don't think I've ever thought the trash was going to soft close, but I've many times thought there was a foot pedal on another drawer!! LOL.

The Hafele has a bungee cord and the location that bungee cord is attached to on the railing is where the drawer opens to. Assuming you have the kind of cans that hang from a railing. My bungee is attached to the front of the floor of the cabinet on one end, and to just a bit beyond the front of the back trash can on the the other. So when I hit the pedal, it comes open to expose the entire front (trash) can and just a little bit of the back (recycle) bin. That's the way I set it up because that's how I wanted it. But I could have attached the second end of the bungee to the very back of the railing in order to have both cans exposed when I stepped on the pedal. The pedal and bungee operate independently so if you already have a pedal installed, just go get yourself a bungee and attach it and you should be good to go. You just need some kind of hook to install in the floor of the cab, and the railing needs a hole at the spot you want the bungee attached. I used a regular old drill to drill a hole in my metal railing for that purpose.