Neighbour has an opinion on where I put my bins

[Opink]

We live in on a very quiet cul de sac. The homes have large front gardens and small drive ways. Almost identical to photo attached (not my street just an illustration of our set up). Houses also have a side yard/paved side garden where people keep their bins.

Well I have decided I will keep my bins in front of my garage at the front. We have a dog who gets let out throughout the day. I have a lot of anxiety around my dog being let out as I am not always convinced the side gate is left shut. It gets opened when it is bin day. Every time I let the dog out I have to check to see if gate is close and when I see someone else letting the dog out I shout at them to check. It’s just unnecessary chaos. Ideally I will just put a padlock on the side gate so teens don’t mess up by leaving it open. We live 3 turns away from a somewhat busy b road.

Anyway, a neighbour has since come around and said please can I put the bins back into the side garden as it is unsightly. Granted I am the only person on the cul de sac with them out. But who cares??

I am not the arsehole, right?

edit: whoops looks like I took out voting somehow

I have to keep my bins on the driveway rather than the side of the house because, occasionally, the refuse truck can't get down the road at the side of my house, due to parking. That means my bins don't get emptied. If I leave them on the driveway, they have full access. My car blocks the view of them anyhow. But it's your property, you can leave them where you like. Dog safety takes priority over aesthetics.

I'm not sure how leaving the bins at the front stops the side gate from being left open? If you're planning on padlocking the side gate so that it doesn't get left open, to avoid the dog escaping, why can you not just unlock it once a week to take the bins out? Or are your unreliable teens the ones responsible for taking the bins out?

Edited to add now I've read others' posts - I think an automatic closer is a perfect option here.

That said, you can leave your bins wherever you want to on your own property, so as untidy as your neighbour thinks it looks, it's your prerogative.

OP is looking to justify her decision. I said to say that's where you prefer to keep them, and not to use the dog as the reason.

They will look unsightly though, but it's the OP's house.

You can do what you like, but it does look a bit manky.
I don't see why you can't padlock the gate and only use it once a week/fortnight or whatever for the bins?

I’d just wheel them into the garage tbh.

I wouldn't say anything to you. Your garden, your choice.

But honestly, that would annoy me. I like my area, and having the luxury to hide the bins on the side is very pleasant. Why deciding to move here if you don't respect the street that attracted you in the first place?

Rubbish bins are not a great sight. I am glad all the neighbours don't decide to do the same.

Our entire street has bins at the front We don't have a side or rear to put them! That's fairly standard around here, unless you want to drag the bin in through your front door and hallway to get to the back

that's an odd reasoning.

Everyone moves their bin to give access to the refuse truck, once every 2 weeks for each bin.

During the day the back door is open but we look it at night. The side gate has no lock. Our gagrage side door is locked up. A burglar would have access to our garden I suppose but there’s not much in it.

It is entirely up to you, but like some others, I can see the neighbour's POV, and I think you could find another way to ensure that the gate is secured.

I always thought it was standard practice that if you have side access, the bins are kept out of sight. I find it's much easier to have the bin near to the back door in any case.

Edited to add that I have a lock on my side gate - I would recommend this.

Large 70's built estate opposite us has covenants on about bins. You can't have them in the front garden, likewise any large vehicle eg. caravans, motorcaravans, large vans, tractors😀. Also fences. Can't have them at the front either. Someone put one of those plastic chain link ones up, about a foot off the ground and had to take it down.
The builder is still around. He lives in a big house just outside the village and enforces it rigorously.
Check your deeds😉

The bins get taken weekly. But the teens are just not reliable in terms of keeping the gate closed.

I don't understand why you can't padlock the gate and just unlock when you need to take the bins out. I wouldn't want to look at bins either if there's a simple solution. Different if you're terraced and theres no other option!

I started leaving my bins in front garden/ driveway shortly after moving in.

The side access to the back garden is long-ish and narrow, which a particularly narrow section that only just allowed the bin to pass. After rain it would also be quite deep puddles and slippery. We had a gate that locked with a key so that’s a bit of a faff to open and close, and it also meant we had to navigate a small step with a heavy bin.

Anyway… that was our reason.

Our neighbours seem the type to turn their nose up / complain about it but so far not a peep from them. Shortly afterwards, they too started to leave their bins out front although theirs are much more politely housed in an expensive wooden bin store so it’s still only us that look like scumbags.

Well, I wouldn't say anything to you, but I'd agree with the neighbour. You have space to store the bins where only you look at them, they don't have to be outside facing the street. I get that lots of streets in the UK have bins permanently outside because nowhere else to keep them, but some of us specifically swerved those streets when looking for a house to buy and have kind of bought into the idea that it is possible to live in streets with front gardens and grass and plants and ideally no lumpy plastic crap, with smelly rubbish to boot, cluttering up the place.

I accept that I may be hypervigilant around this point though, because there are flats and houses on the street at the end of our street where the bins are left outside permanently (even though there is space within the property boundaries for them to be stored) and, because the council collections are more infrequent, the bins are regularly overflowing, and foxes, squirrels and probably rats make matters worse. The council used to pick up any rubbish spilled on collection day, but that's rare now, and that stretch of the street looks more and more of a shit-pit. You may think this makes me sound like Hyacinth Bucket. I don't care.

I'm sure this is not the case with your bins, but it does make the place feel less well-cared for and, I dunno, just makes the environment that little bit less pleasant.

Whilst I would agree with your neighbour that it looks unsightly, also a potential security issue - makes it easier for someone to climb on a bin to jump over gates into back gardens, randomers using your bin for dog poop bags etc, or things like the bins getting blown over in bad weather and either spilling their contents around the road or even worse hitting and damaging neighbouring property/vehicles.

We gained a lovely dent in our 5 week old car courtesy of our neighbours leaving their bins out front unsecured 😡

Oh, but back to the point… I don’t think your neighbour get a say in where you keep your bins on your own property

Tell her to fuck off and mind her own. Recommend some good Netflix shows to her if she’s bored enough to stare across at your land. HATE people like that, like they have a right to control everything in their eye line. They boil my piss.

Im not using the dog as excuse. 100% if we did not have dog we would keep the bins at the side

This is a good suggestion. Then you'd only have to open your garage door on bin day to take then in/out.

Tell her that her nosiness is far more unsightly

It does look scruffy, and it’s everyone all doing little things like putting bins out of view, keeping the garden reasonably tidy and maintaining paintwork that makes an area feel “nice”. Some people like to contribute to that as best they can, otherwise will prioritise other things. I wouldn’t say anything to you though, it’s your house at the end of the day.

Your neighbour does however remind me of a story my husband tells about the mum of a childhood friend. She decided that putting the bins out looked common, so she used to run out of her house at midnight with bin bags and shove them in the boot of her car (so no one would see her rubbish) and then take it to the tip the next day.

So moving the bins to the front won’t solve your problem. The kids will continue to use the gate and you’ll still have to check it’s shut before letting the dog out.

Leave the bins in the garden and get a padlock for the gate. Our set up is almost identical to yours (down to the cul the sac near a main road and the dog going into the garden) and that’s what we’ve done. I wouldn’t dream of putting my bins in front of the garage and if a neighbour did that I wouldn’t be too impressed (but I wouldn’t complain about it either).

Other options:

• move the gate a bit further back down the side alley so you can store the bins at the side of the house but in front of the locked gate
• Plant a bush on your front lawn that hides the bins from the road

I could padlock it now but my son does the bins. I wouldn’t want to give him the lock code as he would carry on using side gate when he hasn’t got keys etc and I don’t want to start hiding lock keys

Just Amazoned a lock so I guess I am being unneighbourly.