Home Sweet Home

Lots of exciting things going on at my place on the waste reducing front.  I purchased a Rubbermaid Roughneck Storage Box for my worm friends Thursday night and had my partner drill some holes in it for ventilation.  I consulted SWRC's website as well as a couple of videos from Martha Stewart's website for some instructions.  He drilled several tiny holes all over the lid, sides and bottom of the bin and then I washed it up yesterday with dish detergent.

I picked up my pound of red wigglers yesterday morning and had to place them in a temporary bin with some soil until their permanent home was ready.  I thought I would be too grossed out to touch the little guys, but I got my hands right in there to scoop them into the bucket because some of the baby worms got stuck to the sides and I didn't want anyone to get left behind.

We rounded up some recycled newspapers from family and work, and cut just the black and white parts into strips to make the worms some bedding.  There is a surprisingly large amount of colour in a newspaper, so trimming and sorting was a bigger job then I had anticipated.  I then placed my strips into the bin and gave them a spritz with a squirt bottle of water just to dampen them.




I transferred my worms to the bucket, right on top of the damp newspaper.  I left them for a few minutes to give them time to sort themselves out and hide.

Dinner

I had started saving food scraps for them a few days ago.  There are some asparagus ends, banana peel, a few grapes and the end of a loaf of bread.  I gave everything a rough chop while I was waiting so the pieces weren't too big.  I buried the food in two piles under some more newspaper strips and then gave it a final spritz with the water bottle and added a sprinkle of dry potting soil.

The Feast

Complete Compost Bin

It turns out that our bin is bigger then I had imagined and wouldn't fit under our sink.  So instead we cleared it a spot under a shelf where we keep our beverage recycling container.  We flipped over a lid from another storage bin we had kicking around and placed a piece of two-by-four at each end.  Next we placed the bin on top of the two-by-fours to allow for drainage.  There will be a little bit of moisture that will escape, but nothing major or disgusting.  And voilà!

Please feel free to post any questions you have about any of my descriptions or explanations.  It looks like a lot of work, but it was really quite simple to set up.  Also, on a side note, we filled up another garbage bag yesterday.  It weighed in at 5.5lbs, bringing my garbage total down to 401.5lbs for the year.  This is probably because the items we threw away were lighter this week as nothing around our home has really changed yet. We should hopefully see some changes next week due to our compost!

-TheDirt