I'm a wife, stay-at-home mom, crafter, and blogger living in rural New England. As seen in Martha Stewart Living, Food Network Magazine, and more! | Tutorials, DIY, crafts, parenting tips, recipes, money saving tips, product reviews, local product features, New England living, intentional living, and more! |
This year we finally jumped on the backyard composting bandwagon. We’ve been wanting to make more eco-friendly choices around our home and decided a big step we could make would be trying to eliminate as much food waste going into our household trash as possible. | This post contains affiliate links |
Composting has a lot of benefits. Some of which include reducing the amount of decomposing matter filling our landfills as well as producing nutrient-rich garden soil to benefit your own yard and garden.
Getting Set Up
When it comes to composting, you could just make a pile in the corner of your yard or make your own bin with some scrap wood or fence. However, we decided to opt for a tumbler-style bin since we were looking for something compact, self-contained, and efficient.
Once you decide on your compost set-up it's important to add some good microbes to "get the party started" and create a good environment for breaking down your food and yard waste. To do this you can add a shovel-full of garden dirt from your own garden to introduce some microbes, or you can buy some specialty compost starter to add to your composter (just follow the package directions).
Composting
Once you have it set up, just keep on adding food/yard waste and periodically turn your compost over (by hand if yours is a pile or by spinning the drum if it’s a tumbler-style). The trickiest part for me is keeping the ratios right - ideally your compost pile should be about 1 part “greens” (these would be fruit/veggie scraps, coffee grounds, etc… I like to think of them as wet items) and 2 parts “browns” (leaves, newspaper, brown paper bags, etc… I like to think of them as dry items). We personally tend to teeter from too dry to too wet in our compost bin but it seems to average out eventually.
I typically toss our kitchen scraps in a bowl on the counter as I'm cooking and promptly empty it into the compost bin outside. This has worked well for us so far since the weather has been mild. Once it turns winter here I will probably invest in a kitchen countertop compost container so I don't need to walk outside across the icy/snowy yard several times a day, and instead can just empty the kitchen container into the outside compost bin periodically as it fills up.
What to Compost
Slimy spinach in your fridge? Toss it in the composter and then recycle the container!
Here’s a short list of things you can potentially compost:
fruit
vegetables
inedible portions of fruit/veggies (i.e. - rinds/cores)
coffee grounds
egg shells
disease-free, non-invasive plants
shredded newspaper
shredded brown paper bags
shredded paper (non-glossy)
untreated sawdust (I make a lot of ornaments for my Etsy shop and compost the sawdust)
toilet paper rolls
leaves, grass clippings
small sticks
The smaller you make the items in your compost bin (cut them up or shred them), the quicker they should decompose and compost.
What NOT to Compost
Do NOT Compost:
x plastic or household trash x meat x dairy x cooked food x glass or metal x animal waste or used animal bedding/shavings x invasive or diseased plant materials - compost very strong smelling fruit/veggies with caution (i.e. citrus/bananas) if you live in an area with bears or raccoons that are an issue
Good luck in your composting adventure! I hope you enjoy the process and be proud in your efforts to be a little more eco-friendly in your home.
Disclaimer: I am sharing my experiences with what we’ve learned in the composting process so far. If you’d like expert or more detailed and specific information, I’d recommend contacting your local garden center or university cooperative for more information. Your local town or city may have composting programs to join or guidelines to follow too.
In January of last year I wrote a post about how one of my big goals for the year was to use less plastic in our daily lives…. but then as you know, everyone’s daily lives changed a lot due to the Covid Pandemic. Even though it was a very strange year that changed our normal, we still made some good progress towards our goal to use less plastic. | This post contains affiliate links |
Below are the improvements we planned to make in 2020, and how well we carried them out one year later… and how we could have done better:
Reusable Water Bottles. We did great with our goal to use reusable water bottles and not buy bottled drinks when out... it especially helped that we didn't go out much for most of the year, so drinking water at home was very easy.
Reusable Grocery Bags. Through March we used our reusable grocery bags for every trip, but once the Covid Pandemic started our state banned reusable bags in order to try to curb the spread of germs. They have since allowed reusable bags again, but many stores still won't use them at this time. So until the pandemic is over and everyone feels comfortable about reusable grocery bags again, we plan to ask for paper over plastic.
Reusable Produce Bags. This fell to the same fate as Reusable Grocery Bags above, and I have been just using the store-provided plastic produce bags. Though, I did write to the grocery store chain to ask them to make the switch to compostable produce bags... hopefully they will eventually.
Reusable Travel Mug for Coffee/Tea. This was quite easy again since we didn't go out much this year. We made a point to avoid unneccessary stops and we didn't stop at coffee shops much... instead, if we were going for a drive we would make our coffee at home and take it to-go in one of our own reusable mugs.
Silicone "Plastic" Bags. Last year I told myself I would purchase some reusable silicone plastic bags for our kids' lunch boxes once we started to get low on our plastic bags (we had a very large box of them), but then school was cancelled soon after that and we haven't had the need for them yet. However, I have since come across these Compostable Wax Paper Bags, and once school is open again I think I will probably use these until our kids are a bit older and I know they won't throw away the expensive silicone ones by accident.
Silicone "Plastic" Wrap. We ended up getting some Silicone Covers and have loved them - they work great for covering leftovers in the fridge or cut-up fruit and it saves us from using a lot of plastic wrap.
Glass or Metal "Tupperware". We were planning on waiting on this one as we still have very functional plastic Tupperware and don't need to replace it yet. Once we need some new containers we will make a point to get more eco-friendly, non-plastic options.
Sustainably Made Wooden Toys. Our kids are still loving and playing with the wooden toys they have gotten in the past. I don't think we added any new ones this year, but I still think that getting some heirloom quality, sustainably made wooden toys for young kids is a great idea.
Being home 24/7 and trying to limit grocery trips and ordering really makes you evaluate how quickly you’re going through supplies in your home. With two little kids, paper products were something we were blowing through and made me wonder how we could change this for the better. | This post is not sponsored but does contain affiliate links |
Now when I say "paper products" in this post I'm talking about paper towels and paper napkins. To greatly reduce our usage of these things we made the switch to reusable "unpaper" towels and aren't looking back. (And before you ask... yes, reusable toilet paper/wipes do exist too - but that's not for us, though if the toilet paper shortage continues who knows...).
“Unpaper” towels are cloths that you can use like paper towels but wash and reuse for a long time. You could really use just about any kind of cloth - wash cloths, tea towels, cloth napkins, pieces of flannel, etc. Hopefully you have something around the house already that you can use, but if you don’t and decide to purchase some we’ve found them to be worth the investment. For the price of a large package of throw-away paper towels, you can purchase of set of reusable ones that will last you a very, very long time and will eventually pay for themselves.
We thought about just using our current dishtowels but we use them regularly already for dishes and big spills (which happen a lot with two small kids). We were primarily looking for something smaller that would function like a paper towel and also wouldn’t fill our washing machine quickly (something else to consider), which is why we settled on these modestly-sized, organic bamboo cloths.
Some people will roll them on a paper towel holder and use them in place of ALL paper towels, completely eliminating paper towels in their home. For our household we decided to fold them and place them in a basket on our counter, next to our roll of paper towels. That way we’d be constantly reminded to grab a cloth instead of a paper towel whenever we had to wipe a dirty face or sticky fingers, but we’d still have paper towels at the ready if we really needed them. I even hung a little note over the paper towel holder to remind us to use less of them.
Since starting this system we’ve cut down on our paper towel usage big time. This has saved us money on our grocery bill and we feel like we’ve made a positive long-term change that’s more eco-friendly.
Cleaning Unpaper Towels: I hung a small mesh laundry bag on the doorknob of our laundry closet, which is conveniently right off the kitchen, to toss the used unpaper towels in to be washed. Whenever I start a load of laundry, I just throw the mesh bag in with the rest of the washing. You could also easily hang a mesh bag or small basket on the inside of a cupboard door with a Command Hook too if that is a more convenient spot.
Hopefully I’ve inspired you to find a reusable, money-saving solution to something in your home like we have found unpaper towels to be for us.
This post is not sponsored but contains my personal opinion as well as affiliate links.
