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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, September 7, 2003

Easy to forget that frozen garbage in your freezer

By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

If you're not sharing a home with someone, you'd probably never know.

Some of your best friends might do it. Your neighbor could be doing it all the time and you'd never suspect. Your mom may have taken up the habit in the years after you moved out. You go over for a visit, they offer you a glass of passo-guava on ice, you have no idea where those ice cubes have been, what they were living next to, though perhaps there's just a hint of something there ... could it be ... akule?

It happens more often than people care to admit. Try ask around. No one will admit. That's how you know.

But behind closed doors, people are freezing their garbage.

They're freezing their garbage with the best intentions, of course. After all, you don't want to attract roaches or ants or rodents of unusual size. And even though on O'ahu, there's garbage pickup twice a week (take a moment to realize that the folks on the Neighbor Islands can hardly fathom such luxury), those banana peels, papaya seeds, and akule bones can get pretty rank if you miss the Wednesday pickup and have to wait until Saturday.

So folks freeze their garbage. Specifically, kitchen garbage, because no sense freeze dead batteries, used Kleenex and scratch paper, yeah?

Yeah, sure, compost. But that's work, that's discipline, and if you don't do it right, you've got those rodents of unusual size again.

So folks freeze. They just do.

Trouble is, though the intention is to keep the garbage frozen only until the next trash pick up, it's so easy to forget.

On Kaua'i after Iniki, the secret came out. Without electricity, folks were very careful about opening and closing their freezers. You can keep a well-stocked, tightly packed freezer reasonably cold for close to a week if you don't open the door 20 times a day or stand there for 15 minutes rummaging through the double Zip Locs, margarine tubs and tin foil bundles trying to decipher the code written in Sharpie pen on swatches of masking tape.

So post-Iniki, Kaua'i people (those who were lucky enough to still have freezers, or houses for that matter) would grab and slam. Open the freezer, grab whatever seemed loose, slam that door shut. That's when people discovered the little secrets. What you thought was leftover steak and onions wasn't. That's never a happy surprise.

It's not like it's just a Kaua'i thing, either — just that Iniki revealed that the practice was more widespread than anyone could have imagined. They do that on the Mainland, too, but they don't admit. There are story postings on the internet about freezing garbage, but all the pieces are anonymous.

Not that it's a shameful thing. Not that it's some sort of insight into character. Not that it's anybody's business but the freezer's and the freezee's.

Just know that they're out there. Be careful when you're dog-sitting for your folks when they're away in Vegas. That little wrinkled bundle in the Zip Loc bag stuck in the corner of the Frigidaire side-by-side might not be chicken tinola or turkey ala king.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.