Avoiding Paint Pains

paint cansYou can imagine that being in the junk removal business, we’ve seen a WHOLE lot of junk, in many forms and quantities. There’s the abandoned house or apartment filled with anything from furniture to picture frames, all of which needs clearing out. Then there’s the old refrigerator that a customer has ‘been meaning to get rid of’ for years. You can imagine what kind of rust those bad boys collect over time. And then there’s the well-known garage or shed clean out, for folks that have finally come to terms with saying goodbye to the mountain of nonsense they thought might some day come in ‘handy’. Yes, we’ve seen it all. And if there’s one item that always seems to get left out of the mix when deciding what is junk and what is worth keeping, it’s paint cans.

Think about it. How many paint cans do you have lying in or around your home? Remember when you painted the guest bedroom that perfect shade of navy blue? Even though the walls were perfectly coated, and there was only about an inch left in the can, you decided to hold onto in just in case you needed to retouch something down the road. That’s all well and good, until you’ve done that with the leftover paint from every room in your house and you now have a museum of  mostly-empty paint cans, taking up space.

I know, I know, paint can be expensive so you figured you’d hold onto it JUST IN CASE. It makes sense, really it does. But think back to the last house you lived in and how many of those JUST IN CASE cans you were left with when it was time to move. Never used another drop did you?

Here’s a tip. Go to your shed or garage right now and jot down the brand and color name of every paint can you find. If over half of the paint is still in the can, think about how you could use it so it doesn’t go to waste. Otherwise, set all the mostly empty (and most likely completely dried up) cans aside, and call Mr. Junk. We’ll haul away all those unwanted cans in a flash, giving you extra storage space for things that are actually WORTH keeping around!

photo from flickr: Elsie esq.