I hope you enjoy this vintage post from our early days at the Green Baby Guide.  Now that our son is nearly three we still find that we produce loads of food waste to feed our compost bin—and, eventually, our garden!

First it was the spaghetti.  Roscoe would pile heaps of noodles on his head at dinner and the make us laugh against our will as he peeked out from the pasta tendrils. Now Roscoe, always the entertainer, has come up with another coy little trick for mealtimes: spitting out food.  He pops it into his mouth, takes a few chews to savor the taste, and then just as happily lets it dribble down his chin while he goes for the next bite.  We can say our son is a comedian or a creative eater, but when dinnertime is over and the belly laughing is done, what are we supposed to do with all that food?

Families with dogs don’t ever have to ask themselves this question and probably also have much cleaner floors than we do.  Since the only thing resembling pets in our home are wilted houseplants, we depend on our compost bin to function as a food waste controller.  Rather than sending scraps to a landfill where they don’t have enough air to decompose properly, composting allows food to biodegrade and be reused as fertilizer.

We keep a plastic container (purchased at a thrift store) on our countertop and dump in all the non-dairy, non-meat waste that ends up on Roscoe’s tray at each meal.  Then, we regularly head out to our Darth Vader-shaped compost bin and dump in the latest batch.

As our years of composting continue, we’ve learned just how many things can be tossed in, including tea bags, manure from vegetarian animals, wood ashes, paper napkins, fall leaves, and grass clippings. It confounds me that the bin never fills up, no matter how many overflowing containers of scraps we load into it. We even tossed our old bank statements and paperwork into the bin this year-good old Darth managed to quickly digest it, leaving plenty of room for Roscoe’s offerings.

For those that haven’t started a compost bin yet, it’s far simpler than you might guess.  You can make your compost bin out of an old trash can and just a few other materials.  Check out this website for a video showing just how to create your bin and start composting. In warmer climates, like here in Oregon, the bin can go year round, but in more seasonal areas it’s best to start composting soon (early spring) and continue through the fall.  Compostguide.com has loads of inexpensive options for setting up your own bin plus tips for advanced composters on using worms or making “compost tea.”

In addition to composting, we’ve also tried some creative methods for cutting down on Roscoe’s food waste.  Instead of loading his tray up with too many choices, we fork over a few items at a time. This seems to cut down on the off-tray food dumping. Christina Katz, author of Writer Mama, recommends taking all those half eaten bananas (which we seem to accumulate on a daily basis) and other partially-nibbled fruits and tossing them into a Ziplock bag. She stores them in the freezer and when her kids long for a smoothie, she whips out the frozen fruit bag and dumps it into the blender.  Voila!  I suppose if I were organized enough and/or had more time, I could do the same thing with veggies and then blend them up for vitamin-packed soups and stews.

At this point in our busy lives, the compost bin remains our standby for dealing with Roscoe’s food waste.  In the spring when we pull rich dirt out of the bin for use in our garden beds, we are glad that we trooped out into the rain all winter long to dump our potato peels and carrot tops.  The top quality soil from our compost is produced at no expense AND saves us money on our garbage bill by cutting down on our monthly pickups.  That dirt manages to help us grow organic tomatoes, basil and peppers for lovely summer meals that Roscoe will likely be putting on his head instead of into his mouth.  Those scraps will again end up in the mouth of dear old Darth, our family’s favorite compost bin.