All You Can Compost: An adventure in integrating composting into daily life

Ok, I’ll be upfront with you, composting still sort of intimidates me.  Like, all the ratios of different types of material you should add to it, how hot or wet it should be for ideal composting, what type of container to use, when to turn it?  I want to know more, I want to become epic at composting (yes, I really do), but currently, I am the lazy composter.  So, if you are looking for the perfect recipe for composting or a review of the best strategy, you should keep Googling.  There are so many resources available.  Maybe a few years from now I will be one of them.

However, if you think you might want to compost, but you aren’t sure where to start, and you just need a little encouragement, this post is for you. Here is my biggest secret for success:

Compost something today.

I got into composting the same why I got into gardening, by accident.  I inherited a garden space with a compost pile made of wooden posts and chicken wire that had seen too many years as it is. For a long time, the compost pile was just where grass and leaf clippings went and magically they eventually disappeared, which made continuing to put more grass and leaf clippings into it pretty convenient.

The key here is that nature does all the work; you just give her the raw materials.  See, I was composting in my garden before I was even trying to compost.  That is how easy it is.  That is my most compelling argument about why, if you are even toying with the idea of composting, you should do it. Because it doesn’t have to be intimidating or a chore. 

I compost more intentionally these days.  One of the most encouraging things I’ve read recently that made me want to take more steps towards great amounts of composting is this list of 80 Items You Can Compost.

Things I Never Thought About Composting Before this list:

Dryer Lint

Stale Halloween candy

Q-tips (not plastic ones)

Used Kleenex

Booze (mostly because I don’t throw booze away!)

Cotton clothes, cut into strips

Toenail clippings

Cereal boxes (shred first)

Matches

I love this list because it goes beyond the obvious vegetable scraps and reminds me that if I start looking around me there is so much that I throw away that could be put to another use.  Did you read the 80+ Item list and get excited and inspired and then immediately overwhelmed by it? 

Me too.  My response was immediately “COMPOST ALL THE THINGS”, followed the next day by throwing away at least five of these items before I had even gone to work.  (Seriously, I threw away Kleenex, a q-tip, finger nail clippings, coffee grounds, and 2 avocado pits)

I am pretty initially ambitious by nature, but then struggle in the follow through, so I have learned that if I want to make any significant changes in my lifestyle that I have to pick an easy accessible option to adopt slowly and then build upon it.  When I first started composting on purpose I started by haphazardly  taking a plastic salad bin and putting fruit and veggie scraps, egg shells, and coffee grounds in it during the summer and taking it out to the compost pile every few days and digging a little hole and burying the organic matter inside. I learned that if you are going to be a lazy composter like me, it is important to grind up any seeds first if you put them in, or you will have stowaways in your compost ship who will grow up to be tomato plants you didn’t mean to plant there.  I embraced it as a testament that life is tenacious, a even maybe a sign that I will “reap what I did not sow” J

One of these tomatoes is not like the others, one of these tomatoes I grew on accident out of my compost pile :)


Next I learned that you could compost non-glossy paper, like junk mail, and I went to town shredding all sorts of things.  However, I never did get it into the pile, so, I guess I didn’t make that step easy enough.

Instead of looking at this list as my ultimate “I am going to compost everything on here” check list, which I am extremely tempted to do, I have decided that I will choose 5 categories to compost and work towards being more consistent at those items.

All plant based food scraps, tea bags, and egg shells

Strategy: keeping a bowl in the fridge to collect scraps

Let my apartment bound friends add their scraps to my pile

Junk mail (I want to try to be better at this one)

Strategy: sorting it at the mail box so that the pieces I will keep to compost go directing to the shred bin.

Q-tips, Kleenex, paper towels

Setting a bag in the garage to collect

Coffee grounds

Putting the grounds and filter directly into the food scraps bowl.

As I use up all my regular filters start buying non-bleached filters and organic coffee

Dust Bunnies/dog hair

When cleaning, instead of putting in trash throw it in the compost

The biggest obstacle to composting for me: The distance between my kitchen and the compost pile. Seriously, this is so lame, but really the biggest deterrent as at night when the scrap pile was full and I didn’t want to walk outside in the dark to the compost pile.  Hopefully, by admitting this out loud I can be held accountable to not be so lazy.

Parting thoughts on composting: Compost something today. Compost a strawberry top instead of throwing it away.  If you don’t have a garden or you can’t have a compost pile, make friends with someone who does.  It is only weird to give your friends your food scraps if you let it be weird.  The point is you don’t have to transform yourself into Captain Planet or Garden Star over night; take a step every day towards who you want to be, and embrace the journey.