If you have even the tiniest bit of green space, we highly recommend you compost. Composting is a great way to: 1.) reduce the amount of trash you generate, 2.) teach your family about the cycles of nature, and 3.) create fabulous, nutritious fertilizer for a garden.
We finally have some yard space after our move this summer, so we figured it was high time we got back into composting. When we lived in New England and had a larger, wilder yard, we composted in the heap method since space wasn’t an issue. In our current, more urban setting, we knew we needed to make a proper bin.
We decided to take our composting a step further this time and tackle the project of creating our own compost bin from recycled materials. We found 3 wooden dresser drawers on the side of the road. Their framing is a decent, solid wood. But the bottom pieces of the drawers are flimsy ply. This design would work perfectly for our project!
We easily kicked out the bottom of the drawers. After a cheap pick up of some wire mesh, we attached the mesh to the bottoms of the drawers with staple nails. Then we added handles to the ends of each drawer. This will allow us to sift the compost and rearrange the drawers to allow maximum air flow and composting of materials.
Finally, we jammed some large wooden stakes (someone threw out a perfectly good 2×2 that we trimmed for this project) down the sides of the drawers to prevent our raccoon friends from knocking over our composting system. Eventually, we plan to have a ton of fun painting our new compost bin a bright orange color, which Bluey picked out.
We love cutting down on trash while also creating compost for our garden veggies and flowers. And it has been great fun to discuss the benefit of composting with our kids. 
[…] of places food can go, beyond our tummies, that we don’t consider a waste. This starts with our compost. Since we need to feed the garden, small amounts of food scraps can go to compost instead of into […]