One of the details of composting is to actually accumulate your kitchen composting materials before adding to your compost recipe.  Whether it’s a big family or just one or two of you, having a handy compost pail to put all those peels, vegetable scraps, and other organic kitchen waste into, keeps your kitchen clean and sanitary.

As composting has becomes more popular, the market has produced many different styles and types of compost pails. Your kitchen compost pail can be a stainless steel compost pail, or a ceramic compost pail normally called a compost crock, to a bamboo compost pail or plastic compost bucket. They come in different sizes from a small countertop compost pail usually less than a gallon size to a large plastic compost pail of two or three gallons. I recommend that your compost pail have a good lid with carbon odor filters to keep the odors in the pail. Who needs smells and pests in their kitchen? I actually have two, a little countertop compost crock by my cutting board shaped like a penguin (looks like a big cookie jar) and a big plastic compost pail next to the kitchen garbage can that I fill with larger kitchen waste and from the penguin pail.

Remember this is for your convenience to recycle organic  (meaning vegetable and fruit scraps,tea bags and coffee grounds) kitchen waste. Kitchen compost materials added to garden waste following  the basic composting recipe of carbon/nitrogen  and you will have the best finished compost.

In an apartment or townhouse where space is limited and yard waste is minimal use a plain old plastic bucket with a lid to collect the waste.  There are grass clippings and leaves and plant cuttings that will be useful for your composting.

Your compost pails are getting full so it’s time to empty them all into your compost bin. I wash out the plastic compost pails with the hose and dry them in the sun. My little penguin compost crock gets the dishwasher treatment.  My kitchen keeps clean, smelling good, and no bugs.

Compost pails are a great convenience in efforts to keep composting a routine activity in any household and the benefits of great composting will show in your gardens and in your pocketbook.