TIFU by throwing away my girlfriends art during bulk trash day

Basically just the title. My girlfriend and I just started renting at this new house, our first time living alone together, so we had a lot of boxes we wanted to put out for bulk trash day. We have Republic Services come and pick up our trash cans on Friday morning – afternoon, so I had done the trash on Thursday afternoon after getting home from work. There were quite a few boxes, so my girlfriend offered to help, but I declined so that she didn’t have to get out of bed. For context, she had been there when movers she had hired had put two of her paintings she had bought at auctions (at least 6000$ worth) in protective wrap, and then inside large boxes to protect them during the move. They had put them on the side of the garage, leaning by themselves.

So when I went out there, we had been stacking all of our actual trash/recycling boxes about 3-5 feet away from where the art was leaning on the wall. The pile was entirely separate, sitting on the ground stacked up. Not paying attention, I took out our recycling and trash cans first, then threw all the boxes in our trash pile in-between the two cans so they didn’t blow away. After cleaning the pile, I mindlessly walked over to the garage, and saw the two more moving boxes, big ones that were standing up by themselves and were heavy. Without thinking to look and check I put them out with all the other trash, closed the garage, and didn’t think about it again.

As of me writing this it’s that Friday afternoon. I was walking out of work when my girlfriend gave me a call, crying and telling me not to freak out, but that she thinks I had thrown away her art. I didn’t instantly put two and two together, but then she reminded me that the art was leaning on the wall, and it clicked. I instantly felt so, so goddamn stupid. She tried calling Republic Services to either communicate to the garbage truck, or to maybe see if we can check the dump, but we got the 24-48 hour response wait for the truck, and they said the office for visitors at the dump had already closed for the day.

This was one of the more avoidable and stupid fuck ups of my life. My girlfriend is furious, and especially considering she had mentioned the art leaning in the wall previously, and that she offered to help, I feel so embarrassed and ashamed of myself. I typed this right after this happened, so excuse any of the poor spelling and grammar. FML

TL;DR: Threw out my girlfriends art that was sitting in a cardboard box when I was taking out the trash. Called me crying when she saw them not there the next day. Art was very expensive and was worth a ton. I’m a dumbass