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.

Christmas: What a load of rubbish.

As you can probably tell from all the tinsel and guys dressed in red suits, it’s Christmas.

(If you didn’t know, please tell us where you live so we can stay with you. It would be so nice to sleep without having to shield our eyes from next-door’s Christmas lights.)

And that means people you haven’t seen or even spoken to all year will suddenly get the urge to make contact once again.

If you’re lucky, it will just be a Christmas card--a snowman or some other “Christmas” scene that makes no sense in Australia on the front, and your name scrawled on the inside. (At least you think it’s your name. It’s either that or a prescription from your doctor.)

Cards are great. You just sit them on a clear surface to show people how “popular” you are, and then toss them all in the bin on Boxing Day.

But sometimes people feel so guilty about not knowing how to work a telephone they send you gifts instead. And these aren’t just any gifts. These are gifts that clearly say, “I have no idea what you’re interested in, so I’ve chosen the most hideous/impractical present I could find”.

Before you know it, your house is so cluttered with this crap you could quite easily turn it into a souvenir shop.

The good news is Brizzy Rubbish Removals can help you get rid of it. Just give them a call, and they’ll come around and take it all off your hands/mantels/patios. They won’t even laugh at all the crap you’ve received (well, not much).

Of course, the worst gift of all is the surprise visit from friends and/or relatives. Forget that whole “Silent Night, Holy Night” stuff. Your house will be turned upside-down (literally if the kids have their way). And when they finally leave (allow 6-8 weeks) you’ll face a house full of broken furniture and carpets so dirty you’ll wipe your feet to go outside.

Brizzy Rubbish Removals can help there, too. They can’t get rid of your guests for you (apparently there are laws about that), but they will help you get rid of all that broken furniture. They’ll even remove your carpet for you if you like. (The good news? Next time your “guests” come to visit you’ll be able to wash the floors with a hose.)

From everyone here at Brizzy Rubbish Removals, have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. And remember: the post-Christmas sales are the perfect time to buy some new furniture.

And a security screen for your front door to keep everyone out next Christmas.

A moving experience

It’s been a great year. Despite the GFC (or was it the KFC?), your business has gone from strength to strength. In fact things are going so well you had to hire more staff.

Unfortunately, while your business is growing, your building isn’t. You tried everything, including “hot desking” (i.e. stealing some from the offices next door). But no matter what you did, your staff still wound up sitting so close together they could actually communicating face-to-face instead of by email.

So now it’s time to find new accommodation for you and your team. But that shouldn’t be too hard, right? Find a place big enough to fit everyone, get everything moved over and set up, and your staff will be rearing to start work the next day, right?

Of course not.

Your first problem will be choosing the right location. You see, what’s right for one person won’t be right for another because it’s half a block further away from the train station. (Ironically, the same person will demand it be close to a gymnasium.) Or they’ll have to walk halfway across town for their favourite coffee. Or the building faces the wrong way and the whole Feng Shui of the place is wrong.

(This is why so many companies let their employees telecommute. It’s a lot easier to set up an IT network than to hire a hitman.)

When you eventually find a place everyone is okay with (allow three months and half a dozen lawsuits), you face the next challenge: seating arrangements. Some people will think it’s the ideal opportunity to shuffle people around a bit, while others will say something like “over my dead body” (another job for the hitman, I guess).

And of course everyone wants a window seat, which makes you think you should forget all about office buildings and start looking at greenhouses.

Then there’s the drama of getting everything moved to your new offices. Oh, don’t worry. Getting it all over there is easy. It’s the squabbling over whose mouse is whose (despite them all being exactly the same) that will make you wonder if hitmen offer any sort of discount. It would have been easier to sell everything on eBay and start again.

So as you can imagine, the last thing you’ll want to do is go back to your old office and start cleaning up/throwing things out.

That’s where we come in. We can get rid of your old equipment, furniture, and anything else you left behind (such as the fridge that’s developed its own ecosystem and is in rapidly becoming a biohazard).

Let us take care of the rubbish so you can focus on more important things. Like telling your staff about the latest person you’ve hired.

And why he’s wearing dark glasses and carrying a sniper rifle.

Advice you can’t afford to skip

So you’ve finally bitten the bullet (or maybe your partner has threatened you with one) and decided to get rid of all the rubbish around the house. You’re looking forward to more space, less clutter, and not having to sleep with one eye open.

Just one question: How are you going to get rid of it all?

You may think the best solution is hire a skip, throw everything in there, and then have it hauled away a week later. But before you make that phone call or hit that website, here are a few things you should know.

Size matters
The first thing you’ll be asked is what size skip you need. Unfortunately there’s no “big enough to get all my crap out of the garage” size to choose from. No, in skip-land, everything is in cubic metres.

Now you may vaguely remember what a cubic metre is from your high school days, but do you have any idea how big that actually is? And can you look at your piles of rubbish and say “Oh, there’s exactly three cubic metres of junk there”? Of course not. So you’ll either hire a skip that’s too small for your stuff, or waste money paying for one that’s much bigger than you need.

Height restrictions
How heavy is the stuff you’re getting rid of? That’s important to know, because if you hire a skip you’ll have to lift everything at least a metre off the ground to get it over the sides. And if you hire a big one, you may have to lift it even higher.

So unless you’re a Jedi knight or have a burly neighbour, you may not be able to get rid of the heavier stuff no matter how much you want to.

The grass isn’t always greener
Chances are your skip is going to be sitting on the front lawn for a week. (It just seems longer, that’s all.) And while the skips on the website may look in pristine condition, chances are the one they give you will look pretty ugly. So if you’re trying to impress the neighbours (or maybe potential buyers) with how nice your house looks, this isn’t the way to go about it.

Even when they’re taken it away again, you’ll probably have a patch of ugly yellowed grass from where it was sitting. Unfortunately most skips are rectangular rather than circular, so no-one will believe your story about the spacecraft landing there.

There’s a new skip on town
One other thing you should be aware of: you’re not the only person in your neighbourhood with stuff to get rid of. And you’ll find out soon enough when you have a skip sitting in your front yard. When word gets around there’s an empty skip on your lawn, people from miles around will start making daring midnight runs to dump their stuff. (They obviously have burly neighbours.)

So what’s the alternative? 
Well, you can give us a call. We won’t dump a skip on your front lawn for a week and leave you to it. We’ll bring our own truck, do all the lifting and carrying, and then take it all away. And we only charge you for the amount of rubbish you have, not the amount of rubbish you think you have.

And when we’re done, you’ll have plenty of space (not to mention energy) to do what you really want to be doing.

Like practising those Jedi moves.

All Fired Up

It looks like Brisbane has skipped spring completely and gone straight into summer. (Don’t panic. I’m talking only about the weather. The footy finals are still on, okay?) That means the bushfire season has started early. And believe me, this is one game you don’t want anything to do with.

So it’s time to prepare for the months ahead by making sure your home is as safe from bushfires as you can make it. And before you say “But my house is in a safe area”, remember that some of the bushfires Victoria experienced in 2009 travelled at up to 100km/h. Still think you’re safe? Some people can’t even drive that fast—especially on the highway.

It’s time to get to work.

If you’ve got trees in your backyard you’ve been meaning to trim, now’s the time. Grab your chainsaw/bushman’s saw/Ginsu steak knife and go to work. But please, no re-enacting scenes from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, okay? The only limbs we want removed are those from the trees.

Next, grab a ladder and clear out the roof gutters. Yes, you may have to buy one if you can’t beg, borrow or steal one from the neighbours. But chances are you’ll recoup most of your money selling the tennis balls, toy planes and Frisbees you find up there back to the kids next door.

What about those “storage areas” such as the garage and under the house? Chances are they’ve become a dumping zone for cardboard boxes, old paint tins and anything else you don’t use but can’t throw away “just in case”. Sorry, but it’s time to use ‘em or lose ‘em. Get rid of the paint tins (it’s a lot easier than painting), and unpack the boxes you’ve had in there for the past five years. (You could even gather the family for a bit of reminiscing as you open each one. “And this was my very first... Gaaaaa! A spider!”)

Okay, you’ve trimmed the trees, cleaned out the gutters, unpacked the boxes and even become a volunteer for the Spider Relocation Program. Now what? You don’t own a trailer. And there’s no way you can borrow one from the neighbour since you stole his ladder.

That’s where we come in.

Brizzy Rubbish Removals can get rid of all those dead branches, piles of leaves, cardboard boxes and old paint tins. (We’ll leave the spiders for you to sort out.) You won’t have to lift a finger—except maybe to change channels with your remote.

Your yard will look great, the rain might actually go down the drainpipes for once, and you’ll have all that memorabilia to get embarrassed about. (Honestly, what were you thinking when you bought that suit?)

And now that your place is ready, how about helping some of your neighbours get their houses ready as well? After all, you’ve already got a saw and a ladder.

And I’m sure there are plenty more toys on their roof you can sell.

Time for a little Garden Spring Cleaning?

Just when you’ve shed those winter pounds and you’ve got your summer swimsuit body ready to put on a show (freak show in my case) it’s time to strip back the garden and get it looking its best for spring.

Prune back the winter flowerers

It’s the time of year to cut back the winter flowerers and deciduous trees. Prune away hibiscus, camellias and lasiandra and cut back frangipani’s. Check deciduous trees for dead wood and then give them a moderate pruning to give them strength and room to sprout in the coming weeks.

Gently trim back winter flowerers in the garden beds. Fuchsias, lavender, geraniums and even star jasmine can benefit from a trim now. Remove any dead annuals and test woody stemmed plants for signs of life.

Get rid of dead wood

It’s been a dry old winter, there may be a few casualties in the garden. Use a pen knife to score bark on sick trees, if there’s no sign of life, completely remove dead branches, prune the tree back and give it a good watering and some fertiliser. Ask your local nursery if it’s really struggling, they’ll have some advice, and no doubt products, to help it recover.

Mow, aerate, fertilise…..

It’s time to do that first mow after the winter respite and your lawn will love you for giving it a bit of aeration too. Hire an aerator from your local garden or hire shop or buy a mower attachment to do it automatically. It’s also time to fertilise and mulch and show the garden a bit of love. Replace your annuals with new colour and add a little spring to your garden!

Love is….a tidy garden shed.

After a few months cold weather, your shed might be bulging at its seams too. It’s time to get tidy and organised for the spring and summer ahead with a full shed clean out. Check expiry dates, chuck out the broken items and do a good sweep and muck out - you’ll feel like a new man (or woman). Don’t forget under the house too.

A family that cleans together….has to listen to the kids moan all day….

While you’re spring cleaning the garden and shed, why not get the whole family involved and get the house ready for a new season. Make two piles, charity and chuck out and call us in to take the lot away.