How often should you wash out your bins?
Grumpty's answer
Every month
Why bother
Food residue draws flies that hatch maggots in a day. A thorough-tier job. Skippable when life's busy, worth it when it isn't.
Why it's a range
Summer heat and food or pet waste want it sooner. Light bagged use in the cold can wait a quarter.
What the job involves
- Empty the bin and hose out the loose muck, then slosh in a couple of cups of white vinegar (or a squirt of dish soap) and some water.
- Scrub the walls and bottom with a long-handled brush. For the stuck-on gunk, make a baking-soda paste, or sprinkle baking soda and spray vinegar over it to fizz the grime loose.
- Rinse with the garden hose until the water runs clear, then spray the inside with neat white vinegar to deodorize and disinfect.
- Tip it upside down and leave it to dry fully in the sun before the liner goes back in. The sun finishes off the lingering bacteria and smell.
Do it yourself, or pay someone?
Yourself. It's a hose, a brush, and the vinegar under the sink, about 10 to 15 minutes a can. Paying for it is the lazy option, not a needed one: curbside bin-cleaning services run about $20 for the first can on a one-off ($8 to $12 per extra), or roughly $6 to $8 a can a month on a yearly plan, per CostHelper.
Signs it's overdue
- You can smell the bin before you reach it, or the odor hangs about in the garage or by the back door even when it's empty.
- Sludge, sticky residue, or dark stains coating the inside walls and bottom.
- Flies circling the lid, or maggots in the bottom. In summer heat fly eggs can hatch in 8 to 24 hours, so they turn up fast once food residue builds.
When to start thinking about it
A few days' warning does it. Grumpty grumbles 4 days out, then leaves you alone. Mark it done and Grumpty sets the next one, every month, so you can go back to forgetting it exists.
Questions people ask
How often should I actually wash them out?
About once a month for most homes. Every two weeks if you bin a lot of food waste, or for outdoor cans in hot, humid weather where the smell and the pests build faster. At the very least, give the outdoor bins a proper scrub once or twice a year before the summer heat lands.
Do I really need to disinfect, or is a rinse enough?
A rinse shifts the loose muck but leaves the bacterial film and the smell behind. Dirty cans have turned up E. coli, Salmonella and Listeria. Scrub with soap or vinegar, then spray neat white vinegar (or a diluted bleach solution), leave it a few minutes, and rinse. That's the part that actually disinfects.
Where do I dump the dirty rinse water?
Onto grass or gravel, or down a drain that's plumbed to the sewer. Not the storm drain at the curb. Those usually run straight to local waterways untreated, and the grease, food and cleaner in bin-wash water is exactly what they aren't built to carry.
Related jobs
Stop keeping this one in your head
This is one job. Your home has dozens more, each on its own clock. Grumpty is a free home-maintenance app: add a job once, it tracks the date, grumbles when it's due, and rolls it forward the moment you mark it done.
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