There’s a popular idea that garbage cans take care of themselves in the winter: “I don’t need my cans cleaned when it’s cold. The cold kills everything.” It’s a nice thought. It’s also wrong, and your garbage can is going to prove it to you sometime around the first warm week of March.
We’ve been cleaning garbage cans around Cincinnati since 2018, more than 110,000 of them, so we’ve seen what a can looks like coming out of an Ohio winter. Here’s the honest answer to the question.
Short answer: cold hits pause, not delete
Cold weather slows things down. That part is true, and it’s why your can smells a lot better in January than it did in July. But slowing something down is not the same as getting rid of it. Think about your freezer. It keeps food from going bad, but nobody pulls a two-year-old pork chop out of the freezer and calls it fresh. The cold just pressed pause.
Your garbage can works the same way. Whatever built up inside it this year is still in there when the temperature drops. It’s just quieter about it.
Why the smell disappears (and why that’s a trick)
A lot of what you smell in a dirty can is stuff breaking down, and warmth speeds that up. Take the warmth away and the smell fades, so the can seems fine. That’s the trick. No smell feels like no problem, and the can gets ignored for three or four months.
Meanwhile, the bottom of the can is still collecting drips, leaks, and the occasional bag that tore on the way in. We wrote about why your can smells worse in the fall, and all that fall moisture doesn’t go anywhere when winter shows up. It just freezes in place.
Freeze, thaw, repeat
Cincinnati winters aren’t steady cold. We get a hard freeze, then a 50 degree Tuesday, then snow, then rain. Every one of those swings thaws the gunk in the bottom of your can a little, lets it soak up more moisture, and locks it back in. By the end of February, that layer isn’t a few drips anymore. It’s a crust.
And if your can lives in the garage, it’s not getting the full cold treatment anyway. A garage stays warmer than the curb, which means the can keeps doing a slow version of its summer routine right next to your car.
The holidays don’t help
The holidays also bring a lot of extra food scraps. Thanksgiving leftovers, holiday parties, the ham bone, the turkey carcass, the mystery container from the back of the fridge. All of it goes in the same can that’s already carrying a full year of buildup. So the can heads into the coldest months carrying more than ever.
What happens in spring
Then it warms up. Everything that paused in December picks right back up where it left off, except now it has had three months to settle in. This is usually when we hear “something died in my garbage can.” Nothing died. It just thawed. We walked through the whole year in our post about what happens when you skip a cleaning for a year, and winter is the season that fools the most people.
So what actually cleans it?
Removing the buildup, not freezing it. That black film in the bottom of the can is mold, and our truck washes it out with 200+ degree water that kills it, rinses it away, and finishes with an eco-friendly sanitizer. The can goes into winter clean instead of going into winter loaded. You don’t even need to be home. You’ll get a reminder the day before and the morning of, and we take it from there.
Not sure how often your household needs it? Here’s our honest guide to how often garbage cans should be cleaned. The short version: if the last cleaning was before summer, the can is overdue, cold weather or not.
Beat the thaw
We serve 284 neighborhoods across 59 ZIP codes, from Maineville on down, and we’ve earned a 5.0 star rating from 500+ Google reviews doing it. Winter won’t clean your can, but we will. Pick a plan and start the new year with a can that doesn’t have a spring surprise waiting in it. Curious how we do it? Read our promise.