Don’t Touch My Property
We live in an HOA neighborhood and we had a neighbor trying to sell his house a few years ago. I kept my trash cans by my garage (they aren’t ratty-looking or stinky, they looked brand new) and when I’d come home, they were gone.
After looking around, I found them behind the fence on my lawn. This happened three times in a week, so after that, I got angry and thought someone was messing with me.
I went to the hardware store, got the largest chain and padlock I could find, and started chaining them to the post on my front porch. My neighbor was outside and I said,
“Hey Craig, you wouldn’t happen to know what keeps happening to my trash cans”? Apparently, he scoured the HOA rule book and found out they are required to be out of sight except on trash day.
He thought my trash cans being visible is why he was having a hard time selling his insanely overpriced house in an awful market and he was moving them himself. Never talked to me, never got a notice from the HOA.
I chewed him out right there—I told him he was an incompetent child and should know better than to repeatedly come on to my property and mess with my stuff without my knowledge.
Trash cans or not, it’s my stuff, property, land, fence, and lawn.