Composting - A New Life for Old Food: Mom Favorites

5 Steps to Easy Composting

It’s my belief that one of the core elements of being a parent is learning how to manage guilt. We feel guilty about so many things – Do I read enough to my child? Do I feed my family the healthiest foods? Am I causing the end of the world by filling up our landfills with garbage bags of dirty diapers? Is a child in Ethiopia starving, while I throw away boat-loads of food my toddler won’t eat? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You can probably tell I worry quite a bit.
While I’m able to plod through my day with the semblance of confidence, I am always looking for ways to downplay the guilt. I haven’t found solutions for all of the things above (my toddler has a limited attention span for reading, cake is his favorite food group, and I’m fundamentally opposed to putting poopy diapers in my washing machine), but I have found a way to put my mind at ease when it comes to throwing away uneaten food – composting.

If composting is new to you, I’ll walk you through the basics so you’ll be quickly on your way to reducing your guilt at meal time.

– First, you’ll need a composting canister for your kitchen that you’ll feel comfortable leaving out on your counter. Make sure you get one with a charcoal filter so it doesn’t get stinky. Here’s one that looks like it’ll do the trick.
– Second, if you aren’t into getting down and dirty with grossness (as parents, I think we get enough of that the way it is), I’d purchase some compost bin liners that are biodegradable. The ones I like are available at Amazon.com. Here’s the link.
– Third, begin adding compostable materials to your kitchen canister. Generally, you can put anything in the compost bin that doesn’t have a fat component (oil/butter) or isn’t an animal product/by-product. Frequently composted items in our house are green beans and bananas. Hmmm…. I wonder who that’s from. But, we also compost used coffee grounds, egg shells (the animal by-product exception), and other kitchen waste like onion and potato peels, apple cores, etc.
– Next, you’ll want to find a suitable container outdoors for you to empty your kitchen canister and let the compost do the dirty work of decomposing. It will then turn into a nice rich soil that you’ll be able to use in your lawn, flower beds or garden. We have the most basic solution: we’ve drilled drainage holes in a plastic garbage can with a lid, and turn the compost every now and then. But, we dream of one day getting an actual compost tumbler.
– Finally, in addition to kitchen waste, you’ll want to add some dry and bulky things to your compost…. items that we add include lawn clippings and newspaper (black and white only – no color ink!). But, if you happen to have hay, straw, wood chips or dead leaves lying around that you need to get rid of, by all means add it!