Living under an HOA means small problems can turn expensive very fast.

So when a homeowner tried to be kind and let a new neighbor use his trash bin temporarily, that generosity came back to bite him once the warnings and fines started rolling in.

What he saw as basic boundaries, this problematic neighbor treated like a personal trash service.

Keep reading for the full story.

AITA for putting my neighbors garbage on her porch because she keeps using my garbage cans?

I live in a townhome complex with a pretty strict HOA. I got a new neighbor around six weeks ago. I will call her Elaine.

Elaine has some pretty nasty habits.

Elaine moved in around six weeks ago, and since she moved in, I have noticed her putting her trash in my trash can. Elaine’s trash makes my trash so full that the bin cannot close.

She sometimes puts her garbage bags next to my bin as well. The city will pick this up, but the HOA does not like to see trash bags or open trash cans in front of the house.

It’s starting to really cost this homeowner.

They will fine you.

The cost for trash pickup in my city is around $300 a year ($25 a month), and it costs around $45 to get a bin if you don’t already have one.

So he finally confronts Elaine.

The first time I saw her doing this, I confronted her. She said that she was waiting for her bin and didn’t want her trash to pile up.

I said fine, she could put her trash there for now, but she needed to make sure the can closed. If not, she would need to hold onto it.

But this wasn’t the end of it.

A month passed, and Elaine was still using my trash can. I asked her what was going on, and she claimed she could not afford to get a bin right now and apologized.

At this point, I had received two notices about my trash cans overflowing. I told her she could no longer put trash in my can.

Last week, I was off from work. I saw Elaine, again, putting an enormous amount of trash into my trash cans.

He decided to put the trash back where it belonged.

When she left, I took her trash out of my cans and placed the bags onto her porch.

It turns out that Elaine went out of town. The trash sat in front of her door for about a week. It was disgusting.

Elaine was irate.

I wasn’t home when she returned, but my wife was. My wife says Elaine came to our house throwing a fit about the garbage.

She said she had received several notices from the HOA and had been fined. She asked why we put disgusting trash in front of her door and got into a very heated argument with my wife.

My wife called me and told me what happened.

His wife wasn’t too pleased with him either.

She thinks I’m an AH for the way I handled the situation because now we are not on friendly terms with our neighbor.

I don’t think being on “friendly terms” means we should be taken advantage of. She needs to pay for her trash to be collected like everyone else.

AITA?

If you don’t want to deal with even more mess, don’t dump your problems onto someone else.

What did Reddit make of all this?

Elaine really needs to learn some common courtesy.

Maybe it’s time for this commenter to lodge a complaint of his own.

“Friendly terms” doesn’t get you out of being an inconsiderate person.

This commenter thinks this homeowner has every right to be upset.

She may have saved on a trash bin, but she ended up buried in even more once the HOA got involved.

Being neighborly is free, but entitlement gets expensive.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.