How many of you want to spend your days picking up people’s old toilets? Not too many hands went up, right? Toilets are heavy. Toilets are gross. Some of them have stains far beyond the bowl and way beyond imagination. You want them when you need them, but when you’ve saved up enough to remodel, you want the old toilet gone. Toilets are hard to carry. They can’t be flung over the shoulder with a satisfying thud against your back like a rolled carpet or a sack of grain.

And speaking of rolled carpet, that’s another thing.

So you save a little money by not paying the carpet installer to haul away the old rugs. You know how heavy those things are after sitting out in the rain for a few nights? Who’s gonna lift those off the sidewalk and disturb the centipedes nestled inside the shag? Not you.

And mattresses! How about those huge, stained and soggy California kings? Wanna make your life’s work hoisting those into a truck? No weightlifting belt in the world is gonna prevent a hernia after four or five of them in a shift. That is hard work, people. That is, to the bone.

You try spend the day lifting old toilets and old mattresses and old God-knows-what. How are you gonna feel tomorrow? Perky? Spunky? Ready to go right out and pick up more toilets? Nope. You would be in bed with a warm compress and a cold beverage. That work is taxing. You might need to take a day off. Or two days off. Take the week. The toilets will wait.

Besides, there is a significant value to the community in having bulky items sit on the curb for extended periods of time. It actually encourages reuse and repurposing. You know you can drag your butt-ugly brocade sofa to the curb — the one ripped to shreds by your mean cat and faded on the back because it was next to the plate glass window — and in 20 minutes someone will swoop in with their pickup truck and pluck it off the road for themselves. That’s recycling. That’s someone else’s treasure. You can haul your termite-infested bookshelf out there, and before you’re even back inside the house, someone has picked it up, termites and all, and headed off down the road — so happy with their find. You can almost picture the termites waving goodbye as they head to their new home. Sharing is beautiful.

All those piles of discarded bed frames and television sets, rusty bikes and Formica countertops create “found object” modern art installations along the road. People pay good money to look at that stuff in art museums, and thanks to the crew, we get to look for free. Those piles also make wonderful rain shelters for cats.

Those workers do a job you don’t wanna do. What’s $11,000 a year in overtime, each? Some politicians, developers and those types make that kind of extra money all the time, and they’re not picking up toilets.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.