I know it may not look like much, but actually it’s a trash can designed to hold the plastic bags you get at drug and grocery stores. They are the only bag small enough to go down our building’s trash shoot and so are the only thing we use for bundling up our garbage.

For years now, I’ve been using a jerry-rigged system that relied upon a round metal can and the holding power of two wooden clothespins with a rubber band stretched between them. It worked fairly well, those the rubber bands rarely lasted more than a couple of months before giving way. And, well, it took a certain amount of dedicated nuance to get the pins to hold. I think this will be a far more peaceful solution and cost all of $18.