I love the idea of composting! Of taking items we might normally throw in the garbage and using them to make nutrient rich material to enrich the soil in our yard and garden. When we bought our home last year we bought a compost tumbler for the back yard. I had visions of a garden and flower beds that would yield oodles of vegetables and flowers, respectively.  Although our property shares a lake, there is a wooded area directly behind the water. Since we are in subdivision with a homeowner’s association, I felt it best to purchase a contained system despite the fact that the only ones who would ever see it would be our immediate neighbors. (Who are GREAT, btw!)

I throw just about anything in there! Of course, there is the usual stuff – kitchen scraps, yard trimmings, leaves. But I also collect other items from the house – toilet paper rolls, dryer lint, cereal boxes, scrap paper (although scrap paper is now being made into NEW paper!), paper napkins, etc. You get the picture.  I keep a small, step-type trash can with a removable bucket at the edge of the counter so other household members don’t forget to throw their scraps & napkins in there. I don’t have a fancy composting bucket because it gets full so quickly that I empty it every other day.

What I love most about it is that I could totally put it right outside the back door, because it has NO bad smell! It just smells like, well, DIRT! The only downside is that its a little hard to get the right balance of wet & dry, and I have to check it often, but this summer it has really taken off! I really should get another one going, because this one will never finish if I don’t stop throwing more stuff into it.

Did I mention that I really love the idea of composting?