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.

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.