A Woman Cleaned Up the Litter in Her Neighbor’s Yard—Only to Get Yelled at and Ordered to Stop

Matthew Gilligan

1 hour ago

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What kind of a person would get upset because someone cleaned up the trash in their yard?

I mean, I guess I understand the potential trespassing part of it, but as far as actually getting rubbish out of the way, that sounds like a win-win to me!

But I guess not everyone feels that way…

Check out what this woman had to say about how things went south when she had the audacity to clean up her neighbor’s yard.

Take a look!

AITA for picking up trash from a neighbor’s yard?

“This just happened less than an hour ago, so I may be a little fumed over nothing.

I (24F) am currently on break between semesters of school, and my work schedule corresponds with the semesters, so I have nothing to do. Being cooped up in the house can make me depressed though, so I try to find excuses to go out on walks.

That’s not a way to kill some time…

Lately, it’s been wanting to pick up trash in my neighborhood, since I see a ton of cigarette buds, straw wrappers, and full on beer bottles in the gutters. So today I set up a wagon with a trash bag for trash, one for recycle (so I can separate them without putting my hand in bag), extra bags, and my picker upper, and head out to just round my block.

I was basically 80% done with my block when I came up to one that had a side “yard” full of trash. I’m talking beer bottles, packages from the local dispensary, and actively rotting cardboard from said beer bottles in their bark.

So I walked up alongside the driveway and started picking up the trash. I only got a single bottle and part of the cardboard in my bags when a guy (M, late teens early 20s) comes out from the house and tries talking to me.

I have to get my headphones off to talk to him, and the conversation was a little like this:

“I’m just cleaning up, is that okay?”

Oh…okay…

“No, that’s kind of weird.”

“Oh, okay, I’ll stop. I just got some cardboard really.”

“You can put it back, but like, this is someone’s house.”

He gestures at the line in the concrete between the sidewalk and the drive way.

“Once you pass that line, that’s someone’s property. That’s weird.”

At that point, I didn’t put back the two pieces of trash and was already back on the sidewalk moving on to the next house, but I was kinda bugged by his response.

Why would anyone care about this?

This is my third trash walk, and the first time someone’s complained about me picking up their trash. I’ve cleared out whole flower beds full of bottles and cans, side yards of trash caught from the road, and even had a man and his son wave to me as I was picking up around their lawn.

I guess I would get it if I were just picking out of their trash cans, or if the trash was obviously newer and they were going to clean it up, but no, it was rotting cardboard and beer bottles all over the front yard!

I didn’t even take If someone stepped onto my side yard to pick up trash, I would thank them, since our neighbor’s trash is always blown on the wind into our grass.

I’m not doing this for anything other than it makes me feel good to clean up around my neighborhood, so was I a jerk for trying to clean up trash from a neighbor’s yard?”

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