It can be difficult to grasp how long fifty years are without context. So when you hear that the number gets filed away as "a long time" which isn't helpful at all if you've also filed away a millennium as "a long time". Being told a styrofoam cup takes fifty years to decompose is easily forgettable. Being told that a styrofoam cup takes the lifetime of an African elephant to decompose is a fun little bit of trivia.

Your garbage smells bad. If you get one of those airtight lidded bins, your garbage only smells bad when you open it, releasing a wet rancid fog right into your face. The best fix is to separate your food waste and store it in the freezer. But unless you're composting that food waste, that's too much work. Instead - or also - add some essential oil.

Cleaning out your house is a monster job, physically and mentally. Every decision to toss something becomes a reckoning of your lifestyle. Even when you decide to get rid of a hat, a DVD or a vase, you have to decide whether to give it away, sell it or actually toss it. Today let's just focus on the easy decisions: The stuff you can actually throw away, recycle or (good for you!) compost.

Given the fact that I have to transport my kitchen trash down two flights of stairs and down a hallway, garbage bags are not something I skimp on. But it seems that no matter how "good" these bags are, there is always a damp, smelly spot in the bottom of my bin.

Garbage bags can be slippery characters, and fishing around inside a pile of rubbish to retrieve the edge of a bag is a pretty unpleasant task. To prevent this very gross situation from happening to you, try one (or more) of America's Test Kitchen's bag-securing techniques.

Before you toss out that empty cardboard box, think about giving it to your feline friend. They will love it.

We all know what it's like to toss rubbish into the bin and have the bag slip down, forcing us to reach into the garbage to fix it. Make that gross reach a thing of the past with a few binder clips to keep the bag anchored in place.

Mac: When you move a file to the trash in OS X, you can't open it unless you drag it out of the trash. That's inconvenient sometimes, but as OS X Daily reminds us, you can just use Quick Look to preview the file.

Dear Lifehacker, How clean does my recycling need to be when I throw it into my yellow bin? I'll usually rinse out pasta sauce jars and tuna cans but it isn't very thorough. Do those still get recycled? What about plastic containers for cream or spreads?