Taking the Next Step

Congratulations! You’ve just bought a house.

It wasn’t easy. It took ages to find, and then you had to fight tooth and nail with the owners over the price. (Things were going quite smoothly until you realised they were talking dollars and not yen.)

But after countless bids, counter-bids, counter-counter-bids (and the odd prayer), you finally settled on a price. The paperwork is signed, you’ve been handed the keys, and now you’re about to take your first step into your new home.

Unfortunately, that first step may be the only one you want to take.

You pretty much knew the house wouldn’t be clean when you moved in. After all, there’s no “This place must be spotless before you leave or we’ll take your children” clause in a sale contract. (There was, but it was removed after too many parents took advantage of it.)

But you didn’t expect it to look this bad.

The carpet looks like it hasn’t been vacuumed in years, let alone cleaned. It’s as if the owners rented it out to a fraternity. Cigarette burns and a multitude of stains and spills have come together to create an image Jackson Pollock would be proud of. (At least you hope it’s tomato sauce.)

And there aren’t just indentations where the furniture once sat. There are actual holes, as if it was nailed down to stop poltergeists rearranging it in the middle of the night.

There’s no point even thinking of getting a carpet cleaner in. (Once news of the poltergeists gets around they won’t come near the place.) You’ll have to rip it all up, take it outside, and somehow get rid of it before the police cordon off your yard as a possible murder scene.

The good news is Brizzy Rubbish Removals can help. No, they won’t solve the crime or find the killer (I don’t think they even watch CSI). But they will help you get rid of your old carpet so you can get new flooring installed and finally move in.

And don’t worry about unpacking all those boxes. Just open them up and let the poltergeists arrange everything for you.

Nothing to sneeze at

 If you flick to the right page on your desktop calendar you’ll see it’s actually September, not March. The good news is any Easter eggs you see will be really cheap. The bad news is the stores will have already put up their Christmas decorations.

It also means it’s spring, unless you had an incredible buck’s night and woke up on the other side of the world.

There’s something special about spring, isn’t there? Everything seems to come alive, and there’s something in the air—anticipation, hope, even love.

Unfortunately for many of you that ‘something’ in the air is pollen, and so you’ll spend the entire month blowing your nose. And even if you do own shares in Kleenex it’s still a bummer—especially if you’ve only just shaken off that winter cold.

(

And on behalf of everyone who uses public transport or sits in an office all day, please blow your nose. Don’t just sit constantly sniffing until someone beats you to death with a WyteBord marker. Thank you.)

So what can you do? Well, you could propose to your partner, get your rich friend to throw a buck’s party and hope he throws you on a plane when you pass out. Or you could try eliminating as much of the pollen as you can.

Pollen comes from plants, which makes you wonder if vegetarians are such bad people after all. (“No, I’m not an animal lover, really. I just hate plants.”) It travels through the air and into your nose, where it quickly turns on all the taps and makes you sneeze every five minutes.

As you can imagine, finding love at this point would be a miracle.

Getting rid of the air is not only difficult (there’s an awful lot of it), but also has nasty side-effects, such as death. So it’s time to fire up your gardening tool of choice—hedge trimmer, whipper snipper, bazooka, etc.—and clear away any plants that look suspicious.

It won’t be an easy fight. Some plants can be incredibly resilient. But with the right attitude (and the optional flamethrower attachment), you’ll eventually have a yard devoid of any living thing. (Including your partner, who’s suddenly decided to stay with their parents for a few months.)

But don’t worry. Brizzy Rubbish Removals can help. No, they won’t try to convince the parents you haven’t gone crazy. (They’re not miracle workers.) But they can quickly come around and get rid of the “evidence” for you, leaving you to celebrate/commiserate with a few… dozen cleansing ales.

Just make sure you have your passport on you before you pass out. You may get lucky.

Time for an Olympics update

As you’re no doubt aware, The 2012 Olympic Games are in full swing.

This event gives people around the world a chance to show everyone how well they can jump over hurdles, fight each other with foils (“pretend swords”) and put their horses into reverse.

But as much as we all love the chance to cheer on our teams and listen to the commentators struggle with everyone’s names, I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking, “Why are they still doing that?”

Think about it. When was the last time you tried hurdling something instead of either slowly stepping over it or grabbing a foot ladder? Have you fought anyone with a pretend sword since your eighth birthday? And when was the last time you were even on a horse, let alone trying to make it go backwards?

(For the record, I have actually been on a horse while it was reversing. Just before it lodged me in the branches of a tree.)

We need to scrap some of these events and replace them with modern-day equivalents. Not only will we get more people taking part in the Games, but the athletes will be able to use their abilities for more than two weeks every four years.

Here are just a few ideas:

Hurdles: Drag a wheelie bin across the yard, jumping over kids toys and garden implements, in a race to the garbage truck that is about to drive away. Points deducted for swearing as you stub your toe on a Tonka truck.

Fencing: Find a long stick, and fend off cobwebs and spiders as you gather rubbish from under a house.  Bonus points for dragging out the cardboard boxes without them falling apart. Points deducted for screaming when a spider lands on your shoulder.

Dressage: Manoeuvre your car and trailer around a rubbish dump, before finally reversing into position to shovel out your load. Points deducted for not recycling and passing out from the stench.

And they should definitely be cooking some sausages and onions on that Olympic flame.

Of course, to people living in Brisbane these “new” events will still look ridiculous. “Why are they doing it all themselves?” they’ll be asking each other. “Why don’t they just call Brizzy Rubbish Removals and get them to do it all?”

And that’s exactly what you should do as well. Let them collect your rubbish and take it away so you can sit back, relax, and watch the athletes in action.


Because some of their names sound really funny.

The Tipping Point

With the school holidays here (along with half the kids in your neighbourhood), now is the perfect time to get rid of all your household rubbish.

Of course, your partner thinks it’s always the perfect time, threatening you with everything from divorce to cancelling the sports package on your cable TV if you don’t do it. But now that the kids have effectively taken over your house, it’s probably as good a time as any.  So how will you get rid of it? You’ve got a few options:

• Hide it in the garage/shed/bushes and hope to God your partner doesn’t find out.
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• Hire a skip (a large metal bin designed to instantly lower the value of your house).
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• Take it to the local rubbish tip/transfer station/whatever-they’re-calling-them-this-week and get rid of it yourself.
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• Arrange for Brizzy Rubbish Removals to pick it all up for you and take it away.

Forget about the first option. Women can spot a mote of dust from across the room. Do you really think you’ll be able to hide a pile of rubbish from them?

We’ve already talked the perils of hiring a skip, so you should probably forget about that option as well. Besides, as soon as it’s delivered the kids will turn it into a cubby house.

So that leaves you with two options— get rid of it yourself or let Brizzy Rubbish Removals get rid of it for you. (There is another option, but the kids won’t let you play with their flamethrower.)

You might think doing it yourself is the better option, especially if you’ve been listening to video games at a hundred decibels all day. But before you don the protective gloves and grab the waste vouchers off the fridge, let’s see if you’re right.

First, you need to get all that rubbish into your car. Now even if what you’re throwing away isn’t too messy and won’t spill on the way, do you really want your car smelling like a dumpster? Okay, do you want it smelling even more like a dumpster?

That’s assuming you can fit it all in anyway. Like your partner’s shoe collection, rubbish expands to fill the space provided. And that would be fine if you didn’t have to get in the front seat to drive.
If your car has a towbar (the accessory that lets you take three layers of skin off your shin when you walk past it), you may be able to use a trailer instead. Providing you have a trailer. And a tarpaulin to cover your load. And enough rope to tie everything down. And a boy scout to tie the knots for you.
Now it’s time to take it all to the nearest rubbish tip, which shouldn’t be any more than an hour away by commercial jet. Unfortunately it’s a lot longer by road, especially when you’re driving the Junkmobile.

When you finally get there you’ll probably have to queue up behind every other person who’s taking a break from their kids. And once you’ve paid/handed over your waste vouchers it’s time to find a spot to dump it all. This is where you discover:

• you left your protective gloves at home
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• a shovel would come in very handy right about now (or maybe that flamethrower)
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• it might be easier to just dump the car and walk home.

After what seems like hours (but is probably much longer), it’s time to head home again. You may have left the rubbish tip, but it hasn’t left you and you get to experience the heady aroma all the way to the service station where you buy an entire forest of Alpine air fresheners to hang from the rear-view mirror.

Now, does that seem like the easier option to you?

How about you let Brizzy Rubbish Removals do it instead? They’ll pick up all the rubbish for you, load it into their truck, and take it all away. No messy car, no queuing up at the rubbish tip, and no being belted repeatedly in the head from swinging air fresheners.

Instead, you can spend some quality time with all the kids.

Asking if they have a TV at their house you can watch.

Weeding Out The Enemy

As you probably know, Brizzy Rubbish Removals can take away all your garden waste.

Unfortunately, a lot of people get confused about what ‘garden waste’ actually means. Especially when one person does the planting and the other cleans up the yard.

Now I could resort to stereotypes here, so I will. Women generally do the planting because they actually plan out what goes where instead of just burying the pots in a hole and heading off to the pub.

(Some plan their gardens out so well they spell out messages, such as “You’re sleeping in the doghouse again”.)

Men generally clean up the yard, not because they’re physically stronger but because they’re being punished for spending so much time drinking with their mates.

And this is where the problems start. The men have no idea what’s been planted, and they have no idea what’s a plant and what’s a weed. So rather than risk being accused of “just standing around like an idiot”, they do what they know best: grab as much as they can with both hands and pull.

Of course, when they see their metre-high pile of garden waste they think they’ve done a fantastic job. At least until they get hit over the head with a garden trowel.

Now we don’t like this happening any more than the men do, mostly because the lawyers always park their BMWs where we want to park our truck. So to avoid this, and the dog having to share its kennel again, we’ve compiled the essential information they need in a handy Q&A format.

Q. How can I tell the difference between a plant and a weed.
A. If you can pull it out easily, it’s a plant. If you try pulling it out with a tractor and it still won’t budge, it’s a weed.

Q. How much trouble will I be in for pulling out the plant?
A. Nowadays the tags on plants tell you not only how to care for the plant, but also how to file for divorce.

Q. What exactly are weeds?
A. Weeds are a kind of supergrass, genetically engineered to evade lawn mowers. While a blade of grass will happily have its head chopped, weeds will protect themselves by any means necessary (bending over, burying themselves, disguise themselves as letterboxes, etc.)

Q. Where did they come from?
A. Another planet, or possibly Hell.

Q. Why are they so hard to pull out?
A. A weed is like an iceberg—most of it is beneath the surface.

Q. So how far do they go down?
A. We’re not sure. We sent an excavation team down to find out, and they still haven’t reported back.

Q. Why not?
A. We believe they’re being held by Chinese immigration officials.

Q. So how do I get rid of the weeds?
A. Napalm works well. We’ve also heard of people getting good results from flame throwers.

Q. But what about the plants?
A. Um… what time does the pub open again?

The Options Are Piling Up

You’ve finally done it!

After months (if not years) of procrastinating, you finally did The Big Cleanup.

It took a full day, a lot of lifting and just as much swearing. But you’ve finally gathered up all the rubbish around the house, and it’s just sitting there, waiting for Brizzy Rubbish Removals to come and take it all away for you.

There’s the old television and all those other electrical items that died the day after the warranty ran out. Furniture so old and tattered even your dog refuses to jump up on them. And let’s not even mention the ghosts of projects past.

It’s quite an impressive pile. So impressive, in fact, that your family drag themselves away from the Internet to come and see it. But instead of patting you on the back for a job well done, they start circling the pile and pulling out random objects. And when you ask what the hell they’re doing they simply reply, “You can’t throw that out. I’m going to use it”.

It’s enough to drive you to tears, or at the very least another round of swearing.

So what you can you do to avoid this situation happening to you? Here are a few options.

Get rid of a few items at a time. Okay, so they noticed the massive pile of stuff out the front (it may have interfered with the TV signal). So only drag out a few items each time to throw away so they don’t get suspicious. (Don’t worry: you’ll only pay for the volume of stuff Brizzy Rubbish Removals load onto their truck.)

Get rid of your family. No, I don’t mean like that. (Brizzy Rubbish Removals will take away almost anything, but they draw the line at family members.) Organise a weekend holiday for the rest of your family, and while they’re away gather all your rubbish up and get it taken away.

Make everything impossible to use again. Okay, so you may not have a smelter handy to reduce everything to a gooey mass. But you can certainly break things into smaller pieces so there’s no chance of it ever being used again. (If you don’t have time to do it yourself, just leave a couple of hammers lying around and let the local vandals do the work for you.)

Sooner or later all the rubbish will be gone, and you’ll get to enjoy all the extra space you’ve created

At least until everything your family ordered on the Internet gets delivered.

Take it away, Valentine

It’s Valentine’s Day, and if you’re male then you’re probably looking for a gift that best communicates those three little words: I'm really sorry.

Because let’s face it: buying the perfect Valentine’s Day isn’t easy. It has to give the traditional Valentine’s Day message (“I am helping to keep Hallmark in business”), yet still be unique enough to make your loved one feel special.

That pretty much rules out flowers and chocolates (although she’ll happily finish off the box while you’re in the doghouse), and even jewellery can be a mistake—especially when you get your credit card bill.

And don’t even think about buying her an appliance. Not only will she hate you for buying something so impersonal, she’ll hate the way it clutters up the house. (And you will too, because it will be a constant reminder of how badly you screwed up.)

So what can you give your Valentine that’s personal, relatively inexpensive and won’t clutter up the house?

Here’s an idea: Forget about giving her something, and take something away instead.

No, I don’t mean taking that necklace back to the jeweller. (As if you’d be able to find the receipt!) I mean getting rid of some of the stuff that’s been lying around the place since… well, for as long as you’ve been together.

How about all those bits of timber in the back yard you’ve been threatening to turn into everything from bookshelves to an aviary? She knows you’ll never actually use it (the fact you don’t own a single power tool is a bit of a giveaway), so why not just get rid of it?

And then there’s that old couch. I know you’ve had it since uni and it holds a lot memories (not to mention pizza stains). But when even your dog refuses to sit on it, it needs to go.

There’s probably lots of other stuff you can get rid of as well: boxes for appliances you no longer own (she threw away your last Valentine’s Day present, remember?), the pile of lawn clippings that’s so high you can ski on it in winter, and all those attempts a DIY that ended up DOA.

But don’t waste the day carting it all away yourself. Get in touch with Brizzy Rubbish Removals and let them do it all for you so you can get on with more important things.

Like finding the receipt for that vacuum cleaner before she sees it.

The recovery process

You’ve been through a lot in the past month or so—the whole Christmas thing, New Year’s Day, and of course Australia Day. And now it’s time to start the recovery process.

No, we’re not talking about your hangover (although we can get rid of all those empty bottles for you). We’re talking about getting rid of the other things you’d rather not think about (mainly because it hurts so much).

Maybe it’s that outdoor sculpture your family was given as a Christmas present that immediately lowered your property value. Honestly, it looks as if someone just whipped up a batch of concrete, let it set, and then half-painted it. It’s so hideous the birds won’t even crap on it.

Or maybe it’s your clothes line that, thanks to your brother-in-law’s kids, now leans at an angle as if it’s picking up alien signals from outer space. Of course, if it did pick up a message from outer space, it would probably be “You’re so lucky your father doesn’t own a ray gun”.

Maybe it’s the remains of the front hedge you decided to “trim” to look like Santa and his reindeer, but ended up looking like it came from the same artist who made your sculpture. Your six-foot privacy hedge is now only a foot high in some places, but should still do the job if the army decides to conduct its “commando crawl” training outside your house.

We can’t fix your clothes line or your hedge, but we can get rid of the evidence that it happened in the first place. (Well, you may want to flatten out that hedge before we come around.) We can pick it up, and more importantly take it away so no-one can accidentally peer inside your bin and discover your little secret. And if they comment on the Brizzy Rubbish Removals truck being at your place, just tell them you needed someone to get rid of all those empty bottles. They’ll understand completely.

On second thoughts, maybe you shouldn’t throw away that sculpture until the hedge is back to full height. It’ll be the perfect way to keep people out of your yard—if not your suburb.