There is A LOT of information out there on composting and even different viewpoints on how to compost. For that reason, I may break this into multiple posts just to explore all avenues.

We compost our food scraps. Be warned that I’m using the word “compost” very loosely. I am not a composting expert by ANY means. In fact, I welcome your input if you have knowledge that I do not! I may be incorrectly informed on loads of this information because I am not taking the time to research it thoroughly before I write this.

I know for a fact that we do not compost “correctly”.

A lot of that is just a lack of time that comes with having small children. When we moved into this house, we got pregnant about 4-5 months later so we never fully got set up in a true, composting manner.

In many ways, we kind of only use it for the “biodegrade” factor.

When I graduated from college, with my degree and no vision, I found outdoor education. One of the classes we taught at my first camp was about landfills.

One thing that I had thought, perhaps incorrectly, was that food waste thrown into landfills doesn’t break down. And for good reason!

Landfills are not meant to allow for a decomposition process. With some of the things we throw away, it’s wicked bad for it to break down and go back into the ground. In fact, my hometown of Uniontown, Ohio is listed as one of the 16 most toxic sites in Ohio. If landfills are incorrectly lined or managed, they can cause LOADS of harm.

Side Note: Recycling batteries is one of the BEST things you can do! I take mine to Best Buy and drop them off there. Many toxins in batteries.

From teaching about landfills in outdoor education, I was under the impression that apple cores, or other organic material, will never break down in a landfill. When I tried to look up an article to back that up, that may have been an incorrect assumption (once again, not an expert).

It sounds like organic food material may eventually break down in a landfill, but it takes loads more time AND it emits more harmful gasses than it would if it were allowed to decompose out in the woods or in a compost pile.

An apple core in a landfill may outlive me compared to taking 1-2 weeks breaking down outside in nature.

So, just keep that perspective in the back of your mind as I continue this post.

I feel like there are some people who take composting very seriously and there are many, MANY different ways of composting.

To me, composting doesn’t need to be fancy or even cost anything, but there’s a lot of infomration out there that I want to discuss.. A multiple part series if you will.

In this post, I’d like to explain what we do now, and then in subsequent posts explain general guidelines for composting/how I’d like to change what we’re doing, and then explore how people in tiny spaces/apartments can still compost.

So, let me explain…

What We Currently Do

At my house, we tend to use “composting” simply for the “ROT” portion of “Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, ROT”.

We are quite fortunate in our location because although we live in a housing development, we have a lot of space. Which was our plan when we house hunted. We wanted space, mostly for our 2 dogs to run and play without too much worry (they sadly both passed last year). Here is our backyard after Winter Storm Harper (yes, that’s a plastic sled – we’re not perfect…):

Behind us, we have a farm/field and beyond that is some woods. We have seen occasional deer in the field that will come into our yard, we hear coyotes howling, and we have a slew of other wildlife in and out of our yard.

In fact, in the past month, we’ve set up a trail camera near our compost pile because we know animals have been feeding out of it and we wanted to see what was there. We recently got pictures of raccoons and even a red fox.

So I get it. We feel like we are “out in the country” (even if we aren’t) and it’s easy to think that only people out in the country can compost. (FALSE.)

We have a small vegetable garden with raised beds that my husband made way out at the back of our property, near a small shed where we also set up a compost bin. Here he is setting up the raised beds:

Wait, our compost isn’t by that small shed. That’s our neighbor’s. You gotta turn around to see ours. Here’s our shed, in all of it’s Winter Storm Harper glory (I didn’t have a picture of it before):

When we moved in and I told my family we were setting up a compost pile, I had every intention of getting my husband to build a compost tumbler. But my sister had the above black compost bin that she couldn’t use in her neighborhood based on rules from their Homeowner’s Association.

It was free, we were pregnant – we didn’t hesitate to set it up.

It’s plastic and flimsy and not my favorite. If you notice on the right side of that picture, it has a flap that you could open on the side to access the lower layers of compost. We’ve noticed that animals learned about that side VIP entrance and have used it so often that the bolts that used to keep it closed are missing. It’s the animal door. Party animals only.

We also have to bungee cord the lid on because in previous Polar Vortexes (Vortices??), it blew away and I had to chase while being 7 months pregnant.

Not fun.

To the left is an unfinished bin made of pallet wood (not the safest wood, we get it), but that’s where we would place dog poop, occasionally sawdust so the poop wouldn’t smell, and weeds from our garden.

In short, items that we knew we would never want to put back into our garden, but could still decompose.

We get A LOT of weeds from seeds blowing off the field behind our house. It happens – we don’t put any pesticides or chemicals on our garden or flower beds.

In our kitchen, I keep a Tupperware container that I found at a thrift store with no lid (perfect!) and I cover it with a silicone Charles Viancin lid thing that I got from a family member who no longer wanted it (also perfect!).

We throw all of our food scraps in there, plus some. If you haven’t seen these silicone lids, they’re really cool and it’s perfect for our kitchen compost bin. They easily lift up on the edge, but if you pick it up in the center, it vacuum seals it:

And it’s a pretty edition to my kitchen. I previously used 2 bigger white Pyrex bowls that I had also found at thrift stores, but while we were at work, our one food aggressive dog jumped up on the counter and broke them. On separate occasions within like a week. It was sad. So the plastic Tupperware without a lid and a home was actually a perfect find for me at Goodwill.

When this bin is full, we march it out and throw it in the black bin.

And that’s it.

Like I said, I’m pretty sure there are people out there who would say we’re doing it wrong.

We don’t turn it, we don’t have multiple piles, we don’t layer carbons and nitrogens, we don’t have a thermometer to make sure it’s “cookin”.

We just let it ROT.

And I “compost” a lot of different things. I realized I could compost my Q Tips because I have the all cotton ones (no plastic stick!) and I toss those in. I compost the hair I pull out of my shower drain. I compost dryer lint (or sometimes turn that into fire starters for camping). I compost paper towels and paper napkins. I now add my Dental Lace dental floss to my compost bin.

We even had a sheet set that were worn thin and ripped beyond being able to send them to Goodwill, so we cut apart the sheets/shredded them while watching TV a couple nights and threw those pieces into the compost bin (because they were 100% cotton).

I’ve composted Chipotle bowls and my bowl from BiBiBop the one time I went there. I cut them down first and try to make sure there’s something heavy on top of them so they hopefully don’t blow away. I recently pulled these Alpaca Wool slippers out of the garbage and I have every intention of composting them (but now that I’m looking at them, I wonder if I could patch them…eh…we’ll see):

If I’m ever in doubt of if I can compost something, I give it a quick google search.

And this is where I’m sure others would disagree with me, but I compost almost ALL food materials except for meat and bones. And even then, sometimes meat may sneak in there (like when I clean out my kitchen sink with leftover food bits).

I have toddlers who drop food like crazy and specifically, a one year old who has decided that when he’s done with a meal, he wants it out of his way immediately and will dump it on the floor. Previously, my dogs would come along and eat that, but now – I put that all in the compost.

In my mind (and I may be wrong), I’d rather have cheese and spaghetti noodles break down outside than sit in a landfill.

Toaster waffles covered in sugary syrup….I compost ’em!

When we plant our garden in May and my gardener comes to help (Hi, Mom!), we empty out our black compost container and mix it in with the soil in our garden beds. Some of it is broken down and sometimes there are recent eggshells and banana peels from our most recent kitchen food scraps. It doesn’t bother us. It decomposes.

Actually one year, we had a few pumpkins that had rotted and we threw them into the black compost bin in the fall. When we planted the next spring, we had pumpkins growing in each of our beds. And pumpkins can’t be contained so our garden got a little crazy, but I really like pumpkins so we rolled with it!

Anyhow, this is what we’ve been doing and for the past 4 years, it’s been working for us. I have visions for improving upon it this year, but that is a topic for a different post.

Hopefully, if anyone is reading this, it got you started thinking about what you can do to compost yourself or at the very least look into options that would work for you. But for right now…

To Be Continued….