Holly Laing from Northampton said she was storing bin bags in her shed after her wheelie bins were not collected, and was moving bags into her car when she made the discovery
Ian Craig Social Newsdesk Content Editor
11:20, 11 Mar 2026Updated 11:20, 11 Mar 2026
Holly said the bin men in her area had refused to pick up her rubbish (stock image)(Image: Getty Images)
A woman was left horrified by what she discovered while moving bin bags, which she claimed refuse collectors refused to pick up, from her shed into her car. Holly Laing, from Northampton, has previously said waste collectors in her area had refused to empty her bins. Now, she has shared a shocking discovery made while sorting through her bin bags.
Holly had earlier explained that rubbish collection in her area operates on a fortnightly rotation, with general waste collected one week and recycling the next. She confessed that her household produces “a lot of rubbish”, leading her and her partner to store excess bin bags in their shed as they couldn’t fit into the wheelie bin.
In a TikTok video showing her sifting through bags in the shed in her back garden, Holly, 27, said: “We have too much rubbish to fit in our wheelie bins every week, and last week they didn’t take our wheelie bins at all. Because of this we’ve been storing rubbish in our shed.
“The bin bags have been chewed, so we assumed there were rats in there. I’d already been to the tip multiple times, but this was me getting ready to take all these bin bags to the tip.
“And this was the moment I found the rat.” Holly is seen dropping the bag she’s holding and fleeing the shed in shock, reports the Mirror.
She added: “I picked up the bag and saw it inside and it just made me feel really weird. I don’t actually have a phobia of rats but for some reason, I was really scared.”
Holly then enlists her partner Sam and explains what’s occurred. “It’s in that IKEA bag,” she tells him. “I’m refusing now, I’m not doing any more. I don’t know if it’s still alive because it hasn’t run out, but I swear it moved.”
Sam is then filmed moving the IKEA bag from the shed using a garden fork, before turning it upside-down, prompting Holly to scream and gasp, before declaring: “It’s gone back in!”
“I called Sam for backup and he just tipped the bag over and it ran back into the shed,” Holly recounted. Speaking while holding open a black bin bag so Sam can deposit the entire IKEA bag and its contents inside, she adds: “This is me being very helpful. I just didn’t want to do this any more after seeing the rat.
“Sam got all the bin bags out of the shed and checked that there weren’t any more rats. They got put into the car and I took them to the tip. I know that this is our own fault, so lesson learnt.”
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Holly has previously said she suspects the refuse collectors had declined to take their rubbish as their bins were too crammed to shut the lid. When a bin is overfilled to the point where the lid won’t close, it can present a safety risk when being lifted by the bin lorry’s mechanical arms – and as a result many councils and waste collection services will not accept overfilled bins.
People in the comments were appalled. One person shared their own experience, stating: “I would’ve been down the street!! One time my partner was stood at our front door while it was open and he was distracted bc I was watching TV so he was too… A while later I thought my eyes were playing me up and I saw something like a large spider or wire creep round my heater round the side of my sofa.
“Told my partner and he panicked a bit in case it was a spider and I was like ‘no it was a mouse or something’ so he checked down the side of the sofa and nothing… lifted the sofa and dropped it… nothing… By this point I had stood on the sofa and made my way to the stairs which were opposite the front door.
“I then *stupidly* closed the front door and by the off-chance I moved a photo frame next to the sofa we hadn’t put up… and this mouse/rat on STERIODS ran out!! I f****** screamed, it went to bolt under my stairs (they’re the stairs that don’t connect if that makes sense) I screamed again telling my partner to open the door and the thing flew out the door.
“I screamed bloody murder, hyperventilate and cried so much!! My partner? He laughed. He has since then, never doubted me when I’ve told him I don’t like certain things. Rats/mice being number one.”