Like most folks, we have a central trashcan in our kitchen where we toss garbage. It’s a handsome unit, as these things go — black with a stainless steel lid that opens when you step on the foot pedal, and it holds a regular size plastic trash bag. When the trashcan gets full, we take the bag outside to a bigger trashcan, which the local waste disposal company picks up once a week. Mondays are trash day in our neighborhood. So I just dragged the trashcan down the driveway to the edge of the street, where the garbage truck can pick it up and haul it to a landfill.

You see, the key to effective garbage management is that you can’t let the central trashcan in the home overflow. You must control it, because if you don’t it begins to smell like rotten food. So once the garbage in the bag flirts with the top of the can, I pull it out and carry it to the bigger can outside.

All of this is to observe that the central garbage can in Moscow is bursting at the seams. Your trashcan can’t hold anymore. Worse, it’s sticking out the top of the can and falling on the floor. You have trash everywhere and it stinks. Therefore, I suggest that you put your garbage out.

Postscript: This same principle applies to the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, with one exception: The CREC is the landfill where the Christian church dumps its garbage.