Like many places, West Virginia has its quirks. For example, guys will call you “Buddy” (it’s an Appalachian thing similar to California’s use of “Dude”). Then there’s the way that the many single lane roads (even in towns) mean that driving often turns into a game of “Is this a driveway, or a road?” (sometimes it’s both)

And then there are the trash bins.

Spend more than a few hours in West Virginia and you’ll see what looks like metal cages  on pallets being used in place of trash cans. They are actually something called caged IBC totes (or IBC tanks), and originally came with a 275-gallon or larger plastic tank (the cage is structural support for the tank, and also protects it).

The tanks looked something like this when new (yes, there is a larger size):

They’re pretty widely available, and you can even get one at Home Depot.

The reason I am bringing this up is that my house came with one of the metal cages. It was old and rusted, and filled with trash, but I liked it and wanted to keep it. A previous owner had taken the time to screw plastic garden lattice to it, and while it was old I thought it looked nifty.

So when I was at the house last week, I spent a couple hours cleaning it out. I ended up with 15 bags of trash (it’s that big, yes) and dumped the trash in a dumpster

Once it was cleaned out, I realized it wasn’t in all that great of shape. The bottom is badly rusted, and it’s beat up. I’ll probably end up throwing it away (at some point the house will look nice enough that tote will be trashy in comparison), but for now I will use it for its intended purpose.