by Glen A.

It’s not often that you go shopping specifically for trash cans. Since most outdoor trash cans are provided by the garbage company, that leaves only the ones you might have inside your home, particularly in the kitchen and in the bathrooms.

I can’t say I’ve ever bought trash cans before, let alone went shopping for them. Angela generally finds herself bringing something like that home. She likes to have things in order and everything in their place, and that of course goes for trash, too.

However, when I go walking by an end of aisle product stand and I see a box with a pair of trash cans in them, and both are infrared, and so open and close on their own, well, even I’m going to stop and take a look at them.

I’m not sure how long these infrared trash cans have been around, but it was the first time I had ever seen anything of the kind. I’ve seen the trash cans with the pedals, where in order to open up the can you have to step down on the pedal. These infrared trash cans do not need to be touched at all, but you do need to be close enough to trip the infrared sensor (sorry guys, unless you have an accomplice, this won’t work for paper wad basketball).

I like technology, even when it’s applied to mundane household items like trash cans. So, even though I wasn’t in Costco to buy them, I ended up walking out with a box. The next day, after I had the first set home, I went back and bought another pair. I liked them that much when we had one sitting in the kitchen and the other in the upstair bathrooms, that I wanted to have one for my office and the other for the other bathroom.

The younger brother, affectionately called "Dummy" like the robot in Iron Man

I like the look of these stainless steel trash cans, and I like the idea that they open and close on their own. It helps to keep odors in, and of course, you don’t have to hide the can to avoid seeing what’s in there.

I also like the fact that the large can has a plastic liner which fits over a garbage bag along the edges so that the bag does not sink into the can. The automatic lids sits on top of that. The smaller one doesn’t have the liner, but it has a removable bucket with handle that allows you to take it out without necessarily the entire can.

The thing I don’t like about the can is that they open up inadvertently while you’re walking by. They can open up more on accident than they do on purpose. However, I think they work well enough that the times they do open when you’d rather they didn’t, it’s kind of entertaining. It can also be annoying.

The trash cans, both the 13.2 gallon and the 2.1 gallon, take four D-sized batteries, each. In the combo pack at Costco, the two cans went for $48.99. Knowing I was going to need 16 D batteries at a shot, I decided to get the Duracell D batteries being offered for $11.49 for a dozen (I went ahead and bought four packs).

You can find these cans separately for around $100 if you don’t want both. However, I think you’ll find enough uses for both that you’ll want at least the pair, and save over half in the process.

For one pair of trash cans, you will need eight of these big boys