yummm, compost

While marriage brought out a lot in me that I never knew I was interested in (ie: cooking, baking, meal planning, couponing, blogging), this whole house thing is almost a bigger beast. For example, it has meant that I have to get outside, do yard work and maybe even enjoy it.

Enter compost.

I had read about composting on, you guessed it, Young House Love. Since we were living in an apartment though, I hadn't really given it much thought, but it was always at the back of my mind. Now that we have a yard, plants and even a garden (more on that to come!), we've channeled our inner green and begun our own composting adventure!

I followed directions here and it was super super simple. We grabbed a Rubbermaid storage container that we had in our attic from moving and drilled eight small holes in the bottom of the container and the lid for ventilation. (Side note: I somewhat totally understand why guys love tools so much. Kody let me use his new drill to make the holes and it was so fun! Definitely will be finding more things to drill soon.)

We filled the tub about 1/4 full of dried leaves from our yard. Then we paused, ran to the store to buy dirt (yes, we bought dirt), and filled it to the halfway mark.

The fun part was emptying out the gross plastic bag filled with food remains that I'd been storing under our sink. Yum!

Dump in all of your food scraps and paper products. Did you know you can compost paper towels and napkins?! Along with almost anything in the kitchen - watermelon rinds, seeds, laundry lint (which thankfully isn't in the kitchen), egg shells, dog hair (which unfortunately always finds its way to the kitchen) and a myriad of other things. There are tons of lists online of things you can compost, like this one.

Make sure to have your pup check out your tub for quality control. We then put the lid on, gave it a good shake or two to mix everything up and sprayed it down with a little bit of water. They said to make it moist, but not too wet or else your compost will start smelling.

We then stuck it in a shaded corner of our backyard, which will hopefully someday soon be hidden by the shed Kody is building (more on that to come too!). By keeping it out of the sun, it keeps the compost from drying out. Obviously in this picture, it's not in the sun. Sorry for the nighttime pics. I think it was only like 7 p.m. though!

It takes about 2-3 months before the compost can be used - which means hopefully come fall, we'll have some nutrient rich compost growing in our backyard. Compost can be used as mulch to cover flower beds, as potting soil and sprinkled over your grass as a lawn conditioner - all of which I imagine we'll use it for.

We put a small container under our sink where we've been adding our food scraps. Every couple of days, I'll take that out, add it to our compost and give the container another good shake.

If you've ever considered trying this, but haven't yet, I'd definitely recommend it. It was so cheap and simple, why not!? We used an already owned tub, bought $1.37 worth of potting soil and a $1.50 container for under our sink. Although, maybe ask us again in a few months when we find out if this adventure really works or if we just end up with a stinky, soggy, gross mess.

And while I'm super excited about this I still have a few questions I haven't researched yet. Like what to do come winter - does the compost freeze? Can I continually add food, etc. to the compost because when it comes time to use it, won't there still be parts that aren't broken down yet? I guess I'll find out soon enough.

Composting adventure...to be continued.