Throwing away trash in Switzerland is, like everything else in this country, very organized and kind of expensive. Regular every day trash has to be put in special bags issued by each county, purchased at the grocery store for a bargain price of 18 Swiss Francs for 20 bags. This is the price in my county, I don't know how much they cost in downtown Zurich, for instance. The price was lowered about 18 months ago, they used to be slightly more. They were also thicker and you could shove more in them. Now the plastic they use is thinner, and rips kind of easily if you try and stomp the trash down too much. At least once a month, we toss out a bag that has been taped back together, or has a gash in the side somewhere.
If you put trash out for pick up not in one of the special bags, it will not be picked up. If you try and slip a non-official bag into one of the big dumpsters, they will go through the trash inside the bag to figure out who you are, and then issue you a nice, fat fine. It sounds kind of extreme, I know, but there is no trash removal tax or fee that they bill you for here. You pay to dispose of your trash one bag at a time. Make more trash, pay more. Recycle more, and pay less. Seems pretty fair when broken down like that, at least to me.
Anyway, many towns also organize a once a year giant trash pick up day. Sometimes this means you can just pile up stuff you want to get rid of onto the sidewalk and they will come by and pick it up in their huge dump truck. In our town, you have to take it to the dump one town over, but they issue us a certificate to waive the usual entrance fee and give us an additional 100 kilos free. This sounded like quite a large amount to me, especially since we tossed stuff twice last year, so how much could we have left, right? I even briefly considered offering to toss stuff for my neighbor since she has more to get rid of than I do, but decided against it at the last minute.
We enlisted the kids to help us bring down all the old furniture from out of my craft room. ( I am redoing it.) Plus there were a few large toys they had outgrown or that were broken beyond repair that we also tossed. The car slowly filled up with bits and pieces and I was very glad we only had our own stuff to deal with. We couldn't have fit much more in there. The most sentimental item we got rid of was the high chair. I still remember going to Burlington Coat Factory in Provo/Orem with Chris and a super tiny Nicholas and looking at all the different high chairs for sale back in their baby section. We were kind of strapped for cash back in those days. Chris was in graduate school, which means he wasn't working, and I had quit work after Nick was born, so we were living off of a very small savings account and student loans. And now we were looking at a major purchase.
We hemmed and hawed about which high chair was the best, and were naturally leaning towards the cheapest just because of our financial situation. But Nick was such a small, delicate guy and we couldn't imagine sticking him in one of those hard wooden chairs. Our Aunt Michaela had highly recommended her high chair to us, a Peg Pereggo. But of course, it was the most expensive one there. It did lots of cool stuff, like tilt back so when your kid falls asleep eating, you just let them finish napping right there in comfort. It was padded all around, easily washable, adjusted easily up or down and had locking wheels to move it around quickly and quietly. We decided to go ahead and get it, and we have never regretted it once.
That thing went through a trans-atlantic move, all 5 kids and didn't even need the padding replaced until the very last child. But now Alexandra is too big for sitting in a high chair. She eats at the table like the other kids and the high chair is relegated to a lonely corner of the dining room. So, we packed it up and tossed it on dump day, along with 160 kilos of other junk. But we had to get one last photo of our faithful, trusty friend.
