"Your mother doesn't work here....."

".... so pick up after yourself." A sign with those words was hung up years and years ago in the staff kitchen of the library where I used to work. The staff supervisor, Audrey, hung it up because she was tired of cleaning out coffee cups left in the sink, and picking up paper wrappings from everyone's lunch.

So Audrey got out a piece of poster-board and a magic marker: "Your mother doesn't work here, so pick up after yourself!" She hung the sign right over the little sink in the staff kitchen, for all to see, and it worked. Everyone washed out their own cup, everyone tossed away their lunch-time trash. Audrey was happy. And when Audrey was happy, we were all happy.

I'm thinking about having a similar sign made for our little community: "Your mother doesn't live here.... so don't toss your trash as you drive."

For the past couple of weeks as my husband and I go for our daily walk, we've been seeing soda bottles and beer cans tossed into the woods. We quickly got tired of looking at the Dr. Pepper bottles, Sprite cans, Bud Light cans, El Corona bottles, and we decided to do something about it. We couldn't understand the trash being there in the first place. This is a nice community with beautiful and expensive properties. Who would be tossing out bottles and cans?!

We walk from our home all the way up and down the hills here to the main highway, which is a bit over two-and-a-half miles round trip. On the way towards the main highway, we were carrying empty Hefty trash bags and our gardening gloves. When we completed half the walk, we opened up the bags, put on our gloves, and started picking up the trash on the way back.

Once we really started looking, there were way more bottles and cans than we thought. The first couple of days, the black-plastic Hefty bags got so heavy and so filled that we had to leave them by the side of the road and go back and get them with the car. Judging by the condition of what we picked up, those bottles and cans had been there for quite some time, mostly covered by leaves and weeds so you couldn't really see them unless you were walking and looking for them, which we clearly were. In front of some of the properties, there wasn't a stitch of litter, and those people came out to tell us that they pick up any trash along their property line every week.

By the middle of the first week, we were able to use white-plastic kitchen trash bags, and still, those got filled up. The last couple of days, we've been using the plastic bags from the supermarket, and we're able to carry them all the way home rather than leave them at the side of the road because they're too heavy. (We joke that soon we'll be able to walk with just a plastic sandwich bag in our pocket.)

As we've been doing this clean-up project, neighbors have stopped by to thank us, other neighbors have told us that they used to do the same thing, others said they meant to do it but never got around to it. We've told everyone that we're lucky enough to have such a pretty winding-around-the-hills road here, it's just a shame to see it messed up with trash. Of course, everyone agreed, and some suggested that it must be workers in the area who toss out the trash because "if y'all live here, why would you want to trash it up?"

We have only missed a few bottles and cans, but those landed where we can't safely reach them, being careful of fire-ant mounds, poison ivy, sticky-thorn bushes, and slanted pathways that lead down to rocky creeks. My husband intends to attach a nail to a broomstick so he can stab the nail into the few cans that we can't reach.

I told my husband that we should send a little computer-printed note to everyone in this hills: "Merry Christmas! We have cleaned up the roadside trash for everyone who lives here!" (I would resist the urge to add Your mother doesn't live here, so please pick up after yourselves!)