Worms
Given that:
[A] I do a lot of cooking.
[B] A substantial percentage of our trash every week is peelings and cores and seeds and other bits from fruits and vegetables.
[C] M has a lot of plants that could use high quality soil.
It clearly was time for us to start doing some composting. While a few cities do curbside composting (notably Seattle, or at least the neighborhood my friend's condo was in), Lakewood does not. If you want to pay someone to take care of it there are local options like the Rust Belt Riders, but we opted to do it ourselves.
When I was a kid, my mother had a composting bin back in the garden. It was very basic, just some chicken wire held up by wooden stakes, with none of the fancy rollers or any of that. It was all the way in the back of the yard, which at that time bordered on a farm field, so any smell was only noticeable when you were close to it. My mother had taken a half gallon ice cream bin with a lid and used it to store the scraps until it was time to empty them out. We don't really have the room in our yard to do that currently, so we took a different approach.
Back in her apartment, M used to have an improvised worm farm in some plastic bins. Given her experience, we decided to buy a ready made worm farm, which we purchased as a mutual holiday present. On Friday, M picked up some worms, and they have been set up in the basement to do their thing. It's going to take me a bit to get in the habit of "throw scraps in container to feed worms" instead of tossing them in the trash can, but we shouldn't have any trouble feeding them all the scraps they can handle. We'll see how it goes.
[A] I do a lot of cooking.
[B] A substantial percentage of our trash every week is peelings and cores and seeds and other bits from fruits and vegetables.
[C] M has a lot of plants that could use high quality soil.
It clearly was time for us to start doing some composting. While a few cities do curbside composting (notably Seattle, or at least the neighborhood my friend's condo was in), Lakewood does not. If you want to pay someone to take care of it there are local options like the Rust Belt Riders, but we opted to do it ourselves.
When I was a kid, my mother had a composting bin back in the garden. It was very basic, just some chicken wire held up by wooden stakes, with none of the fancy rollers or any of that. It was all the way in the back of the yard, which at that time bordered on a farm field, so any smell was only noticeable when you were close to it. My mother had taken a half gallon ice cream bin with a lid and used it to store the scraps until it was time to empty them out. We don't really have the room in our yard to do that currently, so we took a different approach.
Back in her apartment, M used to have an improvised worm farm in some plastic bins. Given her experience, we decided to buy a ready made worm farm, which we purchased as a mutual holiday present. On Friday, M picked up some worms, and they have been set up in the basement to do their thing. It's going to take me a bit to get in the habit of "throw scraps in container to feed worms" instead of tossing them in the trash can, but we shouldn't have any trouble feeding them all the scraps they can handle. We'll see how it goes.