More Awesome Than You!

if I move them inside of a sims house say in a "closet" area will this cause a BFBVFS to my game/ neighborhood? Just checking .....Thanks!

It is ok if you do that, I do that on the large houses so that the maid doen't have to walk back and forth making me pay 20 more simoleons.

I have a few houses I downoaded with the garbage cans moved inside. Hasn't caused a problem that I can see. So it should be OK. Don't ever, ever mess with the mailbox however.

Garbage cans can be moved, but not too far, since the game may use them as a secondary waypoint if the mailbox is not a good choice. The mailbox can only be moved parallel to the street, if it happens to be blocking cars, without problems, Moving it away from the street is bad.

I've moved the trashcan or put a fence around three sides. Prevents it from being kicked over. Works great.

 *whew*....swipes hand across forehead....I figured I'd check just to make sure, before I play that house that I'm fixing up for some new grads, cause for some reason ALL my sims think that they have to empty the trash compactor every 2 seconds and take that 10 mile hike to the outside garbage can....what's up with that?   Anyway I figured I'd try a house with the garbage can inside to see how that works out....you know save them a few hundred steps or so!

I have several downloaded houses where they're off the road.  I also have one which has both the dustbin and the postbox (deliberately using UK terminology here just to be plain bloody awkward, although we don't have mailboxes anyway of course, we have letterboxes) ... where was I?  Oh yes, well this postbox is a duplicate because there's another one in the usual place.  I've used this house twice and the first time the postman used the one nearest to the house, but the second time he used the original.  Quite why I don't know, unless it's to do with the way the house is facing.  Because of that I daren't delete either of them in case I delete the wrong one.

I once moved the mailbox a couple of squares over and forgot that I had moved it.  Then I noticed that my sims would go to work and would never come home until I moved it back to its orginal spot.

So, yeah, don't screw with the mailbox.

This reminds me of a problem I had way back in the early days of Uni, not sure if its related.  But I had a teen that wanted to sneak out and had them do so.  But when they got to the car the animation jumped and the teen and car both disapeared.  And the teen would never come home.  Her needs were still tanking like all heck though.  And this was on a Maxis made lot, and I know for sure I hadn't messed with the mailbox.

I don't have my trashcans inside the house but I have them outside the back door like in RL. Of course, no one's going to carry them out to the curb on trash day but since the trash disappears into a black hole it's not a problem.

And all this time I thought the Garbo wouln't be able to empty them.  Woops silly me.

There is no wrong one. Delete one. Any one. Preferrably the one which seems to block cars the least.

Since adding garages with Nightlife, I've been putting the big garbage cans inside the garage, near the entrance into the house. The only problem is, the maid sometimes won't toss old newspapers. It depends on how the house and garage are configured. If the maid has a straight shot from the sidewalk to the front garage doors, s/he will usually take care of the newspapers. If there's a fence or hedges or anything in the way, I usually have to tell someone to recycle old papers.

I've also moved the mailbox away from the street on a few lots, and haven't had any problems. No more than four or five tiles in from the street, facing the front walkway. So far everyone who needs to finds it OK. I'm probably risking eventual fiery death for all residents, but hey.

The mailbox cannot be moved away from the street without causing things to be screwed up, since the mailbox is used as a positional marker for things. It must always be facing the street like so, although you can move it a few tiles left or right without harm.

Simlogical has the No kick trash which works wonders. Getting the trash kicked 10 times a day is no fun :(

I think some of the new houses that came with nightlife are slightly bugged.  Some of them the mailbox just disappeared and strangely I had no bugs.  No mail or anything came and I played that family a good while too.  Even moving a new family and reloading the same lot made no difference.  After a couple days the mailbox would just disappear  ???

That might have been that bug Crammyboy described about the reading loop deleting stuff like portals.

My Sims do this too, but only since I downloaded enough hacks that it's one of the few autonomous actions they have left. Mostly neat sims, but they're all vulnerable to it.

What I do is put it in a corner with 4 walls around it (2 tile room) so they actually have to go into the room to realize the trash has one can in it. It's really reduced the annoyance of those stupid Sims taking out the trash every time they're idle (and dropping it in the centre of the room when you queue them to do something else)

I really hate when that happens....drives me insane....I haven't "played" the house with the  "hidden" garbage can yet but I'm so hoping it will stop some of this foolishness!

What happens if you delete the mailbox? I heard of someone doing that for a middle-of-nowhere mountain family where he wanted all the sims to be inbred, and prevent any NPC's from coming.

It causes problems anytime a sim attempts to return from anything, since the mailbox is used as a massing point. You may even start to get errors and resets, since the mailbox is required for a residential lot to be properly recognized.

I remember when a few months ago I had a mailbox that went bye-bye, that when I sent the kids to school, they never came back...

Hmmm...I guess I may get my disaster after all, I move the mailbox next to the front door and the garbage can to the garage or back door at every single house. On some houses they are even on the opposite side such as lots on a corner where I can put the garage on proper street side and resituate the house so that the front is on the other street side appearing to have a side entry garage (which remains functional). Yeah Mayhem!

I've done very much the same thing as nectere with nearly every lot and have never experienced any related problems i.e. vanishing Sims, etc...garbage cans are always behind the house, mailbox typically on the porch, often parallel to the front door.

Well it's great to read all this. I stupidly deleted a mailbox once and had problems, so I've never even thought of moving the trashcan just in case it too would cause problems. Now I will. Awesome!

What about the phone booth for community lots?  I have had problems whrn I move a tombstone to a comm lot, then place it somewhere.  The sims mourns by the phone instead of where I put the grave.  Then I have the lot freeze up (I guess the ghost is trying to spawn) and in buld mode, if I move the phone booth on the cemetery lot, it freezes up everything.  I have had to redo 2 graveyards because of this.

so if the sims never leave, and never return from anything, could that be okay?