You closed on the house. Keys in hand, boxes in the living room, and somewhere in the middle of all that you noticed the garbage can sitting in the garage. It came with the place. Nobody brought it up at the closing table.
Then you lifted the lid.
That smell is not yours. That is somebody else’s last several years, and as of this week it is your problem.
First thing everybody tries: ask the hauler to clean it
Perfectly reasonable idea. The can came from them, so surely they will run it through something.
They will not. Not Rumpke, not the City, not Republic, not Indian Hill. It is not stubbornness and it is not bad service. It simply is not something any of them do. Their job is to roll down your street and empty it. What is stuck to the inside has never been part of that deal, with any hauler, anywhere around here.
Second thing everybody tries: ask for a new one
Also reasonable. Also a no.
Inside the City of Cincinnati it is spelled out in writing: stolen carts, broken carts, missing carts and carts for new residents are all the responsibility of the homeowner or landlord to purchase. Moving in is not a reason for a new cart, and you would be buying it yourself.
Everywhere else you get the same answer in friendlier words. If it rolls, the lid closes, and the truck can lift it, that is a working can. Filthy is not broken.
It does not matter who picks up your garbage
Rumpke covers most of our area. The City of Cincinnati collects its own inside city limits. Republic runs a pocket down around Amelia and Batavia. Indian Hill takes care of its own residents.
Four different answers to “who empties it.” One identical answer to “who cleans it.” Nobody.
Indian Hill deserves a note here, because they tend to hand out nicer cans than most. If yours looks better than the one your friend has two towns over, that is probably why. But a nicer can is not a clean can. If you have just moved in and you want yours actually like new instead of merely presentable, that is a different job, and it is ours.
The part that makes people finally pick up the phone
You do not know what was in there. That is the whole thing.
Maybe the last family had three dogs. Maybe a newborn. Maybe they cleaned out a freezer in July and then went on vacation for a week. You did not put any of it in there, you cannot see most of what is left behind, and you are the one who has to open that lid every week for the next ten years.
A rinse with the hose does not touch it either. Cold water moves the loose stuff around and leaves the film exactly where it is, which is why the smell comes back the first warm afternoon.
One appointment and it is a fresh start
This is our entire job and it is all we do. We come the morning after your garbage day, so we are working with an empty can, and we clean it with water heated to around 200 degrees plus an eco friendly sanitizer. You leave it at the curb and go to work. It is done when you get home. Our promise page walks through exactly what happens, and there is a start to finish post if you want to see the whole process.
Plenty of people book a single cleaning when they move in, purely to draw a line between the last owner’s garbage and their own. Others decide once is not enough and start a schedule. Both are fine, and if you are not sure which you need, our post on how often garbage cans should be cleaned settles it in about a minute.
We have been doing this since 2018, more than 110,000 cans across 284 neighborhoods and 59 ZIP codes, with a 5.0 star rating across more than 500 Google reviews. Whether you landed in Mason or anywhere else on our service area map, we already know what day your street goes out.
Welcome to the neighborhood. Let us take care of the one thing the previous owner left behind. Book a cleaning at order.ohiocleancans.com, or pick a schedule on our service plan page.