I’ve been thinking about it, and I guess I was just confused and not thinking for myself about the problem. I’m still deeply confused about why anyone would keep trash in the kitchen. I’ve never encountered anyone who doesn’t keep trash in the kitchen, but maybe everyone is just wrong. I’m always going to keep trash outside from now on.
There’s sort of answers deep in this thread but I want to answer directly.
Large amounts of food in your kitchen trash will definitely smell bad and should be tied up and taken outside immediately if you don’t want your kitchen (or entire house in some cases) to smell bad, but in general I think most people don’t have large amounts of food in their kitchen trash can most of the time.
Also note that as you get better at cooking, the parts that smell the worst when they go bad (high water and starch content) are usually the parts you eat, and you throw away the parts that don’t smell (dry parts like the papery part of an onion or the dry ends of asparagus).
My heuristic is that I take trash out immediately if I’m cleaning out my fridge or pantry, but I usually don’t take it out immediately after cooking (unless I’m doing something like peeling 20 potatoes).
So I think the answer to your confusion is that most people either don’t cook from scratch at all (and have nothing smelly in their trash) or have been cooking for a long time (and don’t frequently throw out large amounts of smelly ingredients), and you’re just in the annoying middle part and it will get better as you get more experience.
I’m still deeply confused about why anyone would keep trash in the kitchen.
Why would anyone not? I have a plastic bin in my kitchen, into which food waste, food wrappings, and any other noxious trash goes. It has a lid and is lined with a bin-liner. When full, which takes about a week, I tie off the neck of the bin-liner and dump it (along with the accumulated non-noxious waste from the wastebaskets around my house) in the big plastic council-supplied bin outside my back door. The rubbish collectors collect it every two weeks. All this is standard practice. There are no smells.
There are smells to me. In my experience, the lids never do their jobs, and anyway, you have to open the lid to put more trash in. I guess I’m just much more sensitive to the smell?
I have a very sensitive nose and totally get where you’re coming from. I have a metal garbage can with an odor filter on the inside*, so the smell doesn’t escape unless and until I open the lid. The lingering smell after opening the lid still sometimes bothers me enough that I decide to take the bag outside, especially if I’ve recently thrown away animal products (which luckily for me isn’t that often).
*The brand I have is iTouchless, but presumably there are other brands that are metal and have odor filters without the expensive electronic lid
I have the same problem. Often, if I have food scraps I expect will smell bad, I put it into a gallon-sized ziplock bag, then close that, then put that in the trash, which I find helps (and is less gross to me than taking the whole bag of trash outside then having to replace the bin liner more frequently).
Btw, where’s all this waste food coming from? When I cook, I cook what I am going to eat. There are no leftovers. The only waste is stuff like apple cores, coffee grounds, and the paper towels I wipe pans and dishes with before washing up.
The food waste is an entire cooked meal that I didn’t want to eat. Usually when this happened, the smell was bad from the outset, and also reminded me of my failure, which made me even less want to cook.
Nowadays since I’m a better cook, this happens less often, but I still end up buying food that spoils before I cook/eat it, or I cook too much, because while I’ve gotten decent at cooking, I’m still terrible at home economics.
I usually dump it in the kitchen trash can, then take the bag out, tie it off, and put it in the big trash can that’s kept outside. Best of both worlds.
Agreed, this is what I do when I need to get rid of food. Keeping it in the house gets smelly surprisingly fast so it’s worthwhile to move them to the outside trash can quickly (even if the trash can isn’t full).
I’ve been thinking about it, and I guess I was just confused and not thinking for myself about the problem. I’m still deeply confused about why anyone would keep trash in the kitchen. I’ve never encountered anyone who doesn’t keep trash in the kitchen, but maybe everyone is just wrong. I’m always going to keep trash outside from now on.
There’s sort of answers deep in this thread but I want to answer directly.
Large amounts of food in your kitchen trash will definitely smell bad and should be tied up and taken outside immediately if you don’t want your kitchen (or entire house in some cases) to smell bad, but in general I think most people don’t have large amounts of food in their kitchen trash can most of the time.
Also note that as you get better at cooking, the parts that smell the worst when they go bad (high water and starch content) are usually the parts you eat, and you throw away the parts that don’t smell (dry parts like the papery part of an onion or the dry ends of asparagus).
My heuristic is that I take trash out immediately if I’m cleaning out my fridge or pantry, but I usually don’t take it out immediately after cooking (unless I’m doing something like peeling 20 potatoes).
So I think the answer to your confusion is that most people either don’t cook from scratch at all (and have nothing smelly in their trash) or have been cooking for a long time (and don’t frequently throw out large amounts of smelly ingredients), and you’re just in the annoying middle part and it will get better as you get more experience.
Why would anyone not? I have a plastic bin in my kitchen, into which food waste, food wrappings, and any other noxious trash goes. It has a lid and is lined with a bin-liner. When full, which takes about a week, I tie off the neck of the bin-liner and dump it (along with the accumulated non-noxious waste from the wastebaskets around my house) in the big plastic council-supplied bin outside my back door. The rubbish collectors collect it every two weeks. All this is standard practice. There are no smells.
There are smells to me. In my experience, the lids never do their jobs, and anyway, you have to open the lid to put more trash in. I guess I’m just much more sensitive to the smell?
I have a very sensitive nose and totally get where you’re coming from. I have a metal garbage can with an odor filter on the inside*, so the smell doesn’t escape unless and until I open the lid. The lingering smell after opening the lid still sometimes bothers me enough that I decide to take the bag outside, especially if I’ve recently thrown away animal products (which luckily for me isn’t that often).
*The brand I have is iTouchless, but presumably there are other brands that are metal and have odor filters without the expensive electronic lid
I have the same problem. Often, if I have food scraps I expect will smell bad, I put it into a gallon-sized ziplock bag, then close that, then put that in the trash, which I find helps (and is less gross to me than taking the whole bag of trash outside then having to replace the bin liner more frequently).
Btw, where’s all this waste food coming from? When I cook, I cook what I am going to eat. There are no leftovers. The only waste is stuff like apple cores, coffee grounds, and the paper towels I wipe pans and dishes with before washing up.
The food waste is an entire cooked meal that I didn’t want to eat. Usually when this happened, the smell was bad from the outset, and also reminded me of my failure, which made me even less want to cook.
Nowadays since I’m a better cook, this happens less often, but I still end up buying food that spoils before I cook/eat it, or I cook too much, because while I’ve gotten decent at cooking, I’m still terrible at home economics.
I usually dump it in the kitchen trash can, then take the bag out, tie it off, and put it in the big trash can that’s kept outside. Best of both worlds.
Agreed, this is what I do when I need to get rid of food. Keeping it in the house gets smelly surprisingly fast so it’s worthwhile to move them to the outside trash can quickly (even if the trash can isn’t full).