Neighbour knocked on door at 6.30am for this reason

[Leilani24]

To tell me my dustbin had blown into her garden and was repeatedly smashing against her wall.

It’s awkward as even if I knew about this, I doubt I’d have knocked to retrieve my bin back and relive her in the fear I’d have woken her up...

I’m not sure if she knew her rubbish had blown all over the street

must be a sad person if she could not move it herself lol

@draylon You just use a couple of bricks

*I'm always surprised that people think their life is the standard we all live by.

This. ^ Not only that, but there is an annoying, smug, sanctimonious attitude from these people too. Like they are somehow superior.*

Hear, hear!

It’s one morning out of the year - get over it!

Have none of you anything better to occupy your minds than this crap?

What miserable people on here. Whether you’re up or not of course it’s too early to start knocking on doors. She could have just moved the bin then let you know at a reasonable time. It seems that January grumpiness has really kicked in.

if it's too early to knock on a door, it's too early to be disturbed by a runaway bin that should have been secured by the neighbour. I admire the neighbour who made a point.

I admire the neighbour who made a point.

Yes, pettiness is so admirable.

If they'd gone to the trouble of getting up to knock on your door, they could've just moved the bin themselves then informed you at a more godly hour. Sure, most people are awake at that time but then again most people are awake at 9pm but I still wouldn't stick my hoover on at that time.
Pffft.

The whole debate seems rather like ‘over egging the pudding’ really. I mean really?
And I include my own comment recently.
On reflection we are debating a blown over bin banging on a wall waking people up.
The culprit being high winds.
Many people have lost their homes or even their lives because of hurricane force winds.
I think we all need to remember that (I include myself here!) and keep things in perspective.

The point is things like this happen and it’s not anyone’s fault. No one needs to make a point or be so grumpy. First world problems. As pp said no one’s house got blown over or died. This is the kind of crap I can’t bear. What happened to decency, kindness and love your neighbour having a nice community, looking out for each other.

Unless it was emergency I'd never knock on a neighbour's door at 6.30am. Even if people are out of bed, mornings are very busy times for most people and they might be in the shower, giving kids breakfast or out walking the dog.

This sort of thing could have been dealt with by the neighbour themselves (unless they are infirm in some way) and then a note through the door.

What happened to decency, kindness and love your neighbour having a nice community, looking out for each other.

Decency and kindness would be securing the damn bin to ensure they don't wake up the neighbourhood, and respecting people living around you, not expecting them to take care of everything because you can't be bothered.

Friendly neighbourhood are well looked after funnily enough.

No Shasta. What you are talking about isn't being a neighbour and a community, but being individualistic and not engaging with others. You are suggesting everyone must take total responsibility for their own equipment so they don't then need to engage or bother anyone else - so they can remain totally separate.

People do take responsibility for their own bins. They put them in the right place overnight and bring them in after bin collection. Usually this works well. However, on occasion you get freak weather, like the night the OP is describing and despite people taking responsible action with their property, the weather causes chaos - bins blow down the road, they tip over, they may end up outside other people's houses or in their gardens and they might do damage. Neighbourliness and community spirit is for the person who discovers a bin turned upside down, regardless if whose it is, to simply put it the right way up, or to move it away from their property and if it's clear whose it is, perhaps 50m up the road to where it belongs. It's not abdicating responsibility because it's not your own bin and insisting on making a passive aggressive point by knocking on someone's door when they may well not be dressed - to imply that they have somehow been irresponsible and that you couldn't possibly move the bin away from the wall. It's petty and being petty isn't neighbourly.

Yes, people do need to take responsibility for their own stuff and not create a regular annoyance to neighbours. However, in times of snow or high wind or other unusual incident, seeing an issue and just dealing with it is the right thing. Clearing the snow from in fri t of your own drive, plus that of an elderly neighbour, or any neighbour. Moving a fallen branch that has blocked your drive or someone else's. These things need sorting and the first person who spots it and can deal deal with it should, when we are talking bout something that will take 30 seconds.
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Where did the OP ever write she tried to secure her bins and ensure they would not be a nuisance for the neighbours! I hate this lazy attitude "It's not my fault, it was the wind, innit"
Sometimes there are extreme situations, but other times it's just lazy and entitled people.

But when it's bin day, on 95% of occasions, there is no need to secure the bins. You put them at the end of your drive or on the pavement and they just stand there. It's absolutely fine. And the thing is that this WAS a day of extreme weather and no evidence of them being lazy and entitled, only evidence of the neighbours being un-neighbourly and passive aggressive in their 6.30 knocking being a way of insisting the OP came and moved the bin, rather than just doing it, which would have taken less time than coming and knocking anyway.

Strikes me, as a particular kind of person, who, on seeing a situation like this bin one, doesn't just instantly move the bin (common sense) but instead sees a reason to be aggrieved with the neighbour and a need to go and knock on their door at an anti social time. It's the kind of person who is looking to feel aggrieved about all kinds of things and takes an individualistic and rigid 'rights' kind of attitude, rather than being able to apply common sense to situations.

Skowvegas You asked How many thousands of trees were down?

The parts of the UK that I'm familiar with which have the strongest gusts of wind (Scottish islands) don't have thousands of trees.
They hardly have any trees at all.

Perhaps the neighbour had a busy day ahead and wanted to let you know where your bin had gone and what was making the noise. Difficult to imagine situation without dare I say it, a diagram. 6.30 is early but not horrendously so for an awful lot of folk. Forgive and forget!

Who on earth leaves their bin unsecured overnight when there's an extreme weather alert! Stupid and entitled behaviour, at least wait until the morning - unless the binmen come to collect the bins at 3am, but that's pretty rare

Our bin was banging into the side of dh car. I wish someone had knocked on our door, even at 6am. I can understand she was very worried about the damage.
Surely you would have preferred them to just move the bin?!

tip for the future, secure your bin if it's expected to be windy.
I did my best with mine. I wedged the empty one in with the full one but the wind still got behind them.
Rather bizarre suggestions that a couple of bricks or even a breeze block (that we all have handy) would do anything to help. The storm was a hell of a lot stronger than that. It brought down trees and fences, a couple of bricks wouldn't stop it.

So please tell me, how do you secure a bin to ensure that storm winds can't move it? There is nothing that I could tie them to and a couple of bricks isn't going to make a blind bit of difference.

So please tell me, how do you secure a bin to ensure that storm winds can't move it?

Worst case, you could take it inside the house.

Surely it’s the case that sometimes you only realise you haven’t secured your bin properly when it moves overnight?

At which point your neighbour doesn’t have much to gain by telling you, rather than just moving it back.

Sometimes people don't know there is a severe weather warning, sometimes they try to secure the bin and it doesn't work,msometimes there's nothing to secure to.

None of these things make the person a bad or an entitled neighbour, who deserves passive aggression from another neighbour.

When we live in streets with other people, it's not possible to never be affected by someone else or their stuff. We do have to be prepared to live and let live to some extent, if we aren't to feel permanantly annoyed and give ourselves high blood pressure, by other people just living their lives. Showing some common sense, forbearance and flexibility is key - otherwise you need to go and live remotely and away from everyone else if you don't want to spend your life disappointed by other people's behaviour, which in reality is just...normal living.

FWIW, I think the knocking at 6.30 was passive aggressive. They needn't have done it. OP is feeling annoyed and irritated at the time and tone. She needs to let it go too and not dwell on it - again showing a bit of forbearance which always helps with positive neighbourly relations.

Perhaps this is an area of tit-for-tat - none of the neighbours like each other or have any sense of community. They all look out for things to be cross about and enjoy 'being in the right' and pointing out the error of other people's ways. If it's like that, I'm glad I do t live there. I'm glad I live in a road where if my bin blew down the road,msometimes would just move it to where it belongs, without it being a big deal, where we are happy to take in parcels for each other and even have a Christmas drink together. We put up with each other doing DIY or mowing the lawn which can be a bit noisy, plus we try not to have loud, noisy garden parties that run beyond midnight, but understand that people will have the odd BBQ etc. It's just community living.