The word is out and the anxiety is growing.
In neighborhoods rich and poor, black and white, neat and messy Baltimoreans are keenly aware that a decades-old, twice-a-week rhythm of their lives is about to be disrupted.
Soon the garbage trucks that pick up their trash will clatter down their streets just once a week.
Oh, another truck will come a couple of days later, but it will only take recyclables, those mostly non-offending papers, boxes, bottles and cans - not the crab shells, baby diapers, cat litter, moldy bread and bruised spinach you don't want sitting around for the week in between pickups.
"They are not clean in this area," Britney Powell said last week as she sat on her steps in Fulton Heights and vented about the impending trash buildup.
She shook her head.
The public policy reasons for the change have been articulated, at City Council hearings and in community meetings: The new plan, which goes into effect July 14, will save the city $7 million in desperately needed cash. It will free up more crews to clean the city's persistently filthy alleys. It will prod citizens to recycle more, a priority for Mayor Sheila Dixon, who signed the change into law last week.
Those who inhabit the leafy neighborhoods with large homes and ample storage for garbage cans have not shown a great deal of discomfort about the new collection schedule, and their council members supported the plan.
But for those living in Baltimore's tightly packed rowhouses, with little to no outdoor space, the concerns are strikingly similar: Where will trash be kept between collections? What if it starts to stink? Will we be fined for not using a can?
These are folks who live in long, narrow homes. Many applaud the doubled recycling collection. But they shudder at the thought of dragging stinky week-old trash from their postage-stamp backyards through a kitchen, then a dining room, then a living room.
"How often can you go to the dump?" asked Shirrell Montgomery, who also lives in Fulton Heights in West Baltimore and anticipates trash becoming overwhelming between collection days.
Across town the complaints echo: "We have people who cannot carry a can through their house," said Barry Glassman, president of the Butchers Hill community association.
Increasing the angst is the fact that many of the people in neighborhoods like these are in the habit of not putting their trash out on the curb in covered containers, despite a long-standing law requiring this. They say they have nowhere to keep a bulky can in a tiny house, so they use bags.
