Dear Dáithí: My neighbour's bin stinks. Should I approach them about it? 

Maybe they don't realise that this smell is bothering you so much, but please don't believe them if they say they can't smell it, says Dáithí.  Picture: iStock

Dear Dáithí

Our neighbour’s bin is absolutely stinking, and I don’t know whether I should approach them about it or not.

We’ve lived next to them for close to a decade, and I don’t know if they have ever cleaned it. With the warm weather, it is akin to living next to a slurry pit, or maybe it’s worse. I’ve even seen some well-fed maggots crawling down the side of it.

Every time I step into my garden, I feel like I’m going to vomit.

Nobody likes cleaning their bins. I had to do my own earlier this month and it’s definitely not my favorite job.

I don’t know if they haven’t cleaned it because of the hose pipe ban or do they not realise they need to clean it.

Should I approach them and ask them to clean it out, or maybe offer them some advice on how I clean mine and hope the penny drops? I don’t even want to open my windows.

What should I do?

There are a few downsides to having nice warm weather during the summer, and we have just stumbled upon one of them.

With this type of weather comes a variety of smells. For example, I was walking up the side of a mountain a few weeks back, and all I could smell was the beautiful heather that was all around me; if it wasn’t for the heat, the smell wouldn’t have been as pungent.

The problem with this is that when the smell is bad, the heat is like a mega blaster, and that rotten smell goes everywhere and even sticks to your clothes; we all know it. It’s disgusting, and the problem for you is this awful smell is right outside your door, and it gets so bad you can’t open the windows, and you feel sick.

Well, that’s just not good enough, and you need to do something about it because you can’t live like this! I’m sorry, you work too hard to allow this to continue. Also, this is your home, your happy place, and nobody should take that peace of mind from you.

Okay, maybe they don’t realise this smell is bothering you so much, but please don’t believe them if they say they can’t smell it.

Really, they should have this knocked on the head. It’s one thing if their bins are at the back of their house away from everyone; it’s another thing when they are up against another person’s property.

You asked at the end of your letter if you should go and give them some advice on this: No way. Please don’t. All this will do is annoy them and could even make the problem worse.

The good thing here is that you’ve lived next to these people for decades, and I can only presume you know them well, and the fact you haven’t fallen out with them before this would suggest you get on well or at least don’t dislike each other, until now anyway.

I’d chat with the people you know best in the house and the person you think would listen and understand. You’re not going over making any demands, all you are doing is letting the person know there is a very strong smell coming from the bins, especially when the weather is hot and that smell makes you sick and it’s so strong you can’t even air out your house.

The normal response to that would be, “Lord God, I’m sorry I didn’t know!”. And the person would go and clean the bins and keep them that way. The person might turn around and say tough and to deal with it.

That’s when you tell them what you saw crawling out of the bins and when bins are left like that, rats could start making their way around the place — affecting your property and home — and it could become an environmental issue which brings a whole load of other problems with it. At that point, they wouldn’t be dealing it with you, but with a higher authority.

But I’d hold that until the very end of the conversation if you find yourself down a cul-de sac and nowhere else to go.

What you are really trying to do is say, look, your bins stink, clean them and we can all live happily ever after, and what you don’t want is to live next to someone who you don’t get on with.

If your neighbour is being a pain about this, you could contact the bin company that collects the bins and tell them about it. I wonder whether they could help?

I definitely feel for you on this one; I think it’s such an invasion of your home and wellbeing.

We all come home from work, and all we want to do is put our feet up and relax, and the last thing we want to be doing is dealing with this crap; other people’s crap, actually!

But like most responses I have, and this is the same: If you don’t do something about it now, it will continue and will only get worse.

I think things will change when you have that chat. There is nothing gained here by them fighting with you either.

Common sense should prevail here, but we all know sense sometimes is not that common!