“Dude, what is that foulness?” Amit Lakhani asks his roommate.

Lakhani, a senior in physics, is not referring to his roommate’s body odor, but rather the overflowing trash can in their kitchen.

Their trash can is tall and habitually collects trash like a magnet, with soda bottles and frozen pizza boxes peeking out like it is a community trash bin.

“We constantly avoid taking out the trash, which ends up with it getting very smelly,” Lakhani said.

He recalled the night their trash-taking procrastination reached a climax. He said his roommate went into the kitchen at 2:30 a.m. for a drink of water and discovered three separate clusters of ants spread about, feeding on their pile of trash.

He said his roommate panicked and began stomping the ants with his bare feet and crushing them with his bare hands and fingers. He looked in the cabinets for bug spray, but couldn’t find any, so he settled on using oven cleaner.

“He said it did the trick,” Lakhani said. “It killed the bugs faster than regular bug spray. But I told him it would be a lot easier if we managed our trash better.”

Lakhani wasn’t the only student who admitted to trash-removal procrastination while at college.

Leaving his trash on the porch is a method Warren Immel, a senior in electrical engineering, said he uses. He said he does this so his roommate will throw it into his truck when he gets home. He attributes their procrastination to simple laziness.

“We just don’t like taking it all the way down to the trash Dumpster,” Immel said.

Creating excuses is another way to avoid taking out the trash, according to Rory McElroy, a senior in psychology.

“I tell myself that I’m going to finish playing FIFA and then I’ll go, but it usually never happens,” McElroy said. “And usually it ends up with us having the filled-up trash can with two or three smaller bags next to it.”

Covering up the smell is a method Shaunak Joshi, a senior in electrical engineering, said he uses as an alternative for taking out the trash. He said he sprays the trash can with Lysol and hopes it can buy him a few days.

Lindsey Garner, a sophomore in zoology, said she’s had an aversion to trash all her life.

“My mother used to make me take it out when I was little. I was too small and the bags were really big, so it was really uncomfortable,” Garner said. “Now I make a deal with my roommate. She takes out the trash and I just vacuum.”

Neighbors occasionally become a helping hand by taking out trash for those who dislike to do it.

“I ask one of my neighbors to take the trash out for me because I’m heading out or going to class,” Daniel Knight, a sophomore in history education, said.

Having a friend over for a visit and watching TV with her seems like a usual thing to do. But Paige Profio, a junior in psychology, said she and her roommate often invite a particular friend over to enjoy some quality time together and then they ask her to take their trash when she leaves.

“She lives close to the Dumpster, so we ask her if she’s willing to take our trash out when she’s ready to leave,” Profio said. “I don’t like taking it to the Dumpster because I have to put the trash in my car and it smells gross.”

Students also make use of their roommates, rather than their neighbors, to do their dirty work for them.

“If I see that the trash is full, I just leave and sometimes avoid my roommate,” Jason Livginston, a sophomore in English education, said. “Either that or I will start throwing stuff away in my bathroom trash can.”

Knowing when to take the trash out is the first step in getting the bag to the trash bin. Preston Hughes, a senior in fisheries and wildlife science, said he knows exactly when it’s time to take out the trash.

“Our trash piles up in the corner,” Hughes said. “We have our bottles and cans stacked halfway out in front of the door. We sometimes trip over it and know that it’s time to take it out.”

Audrey Wilson, a junior in communication, said she knows when the trash needs to be taken out, but can’t find the drive to do it. She takes the bag out of the trash can and stores it in the laundry room until she can’t stand it any longer.

“I think I avoid it more because I’m really busy and it’s just one extra thing I don’t have to think about, and when I do think about it I feel like I have to come up with some action plan of how I’m going to deal with it.

Oftentimes the delay of waste removal results in some creative maneuvering to manage apartment life because students avoid making trash so they won’t have to take the trash out.

“I’ve reused paper plates that weren’t ‘too dirty’ just so that I didn’t have to throw them away, or reused paper cups,” Jacob Hefner, a senior in mechanical engineering, said.

According to Caleb Walker, a senior in electrical engineering, students can manage their trash by throwing away as little as possible and using larger trash bags.

“I keep trash spread as thin as possible in my room so it’s not so obvious that I need to take it out,” Walker said. “Or I play a game of ‘Who Can Stand the Trash the Longest’ with roommates, and I always win.”

While some students try to not have the responsibility of taking out the trash, others make sure their trash never reaches the overflowing point.

“I have a roommate who’s very strict about taking out the trash,” Chris Garland, a senior in psychology, said. “He once found our neighbors’ trash bags in the woods outside of our town house and then threw it onto their porch to teach them a lesson.”

Garland said one time his roommate burned their trash outside because it was getting too high.

“Taking out the trash is pretty simple,” Garland said. “But eventually it starts to smell and you just have to get rid of it.”