Live Renewed

*Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Mighty Nest. Opinions, of course, are always 100% my own.

There are three main components of composting – building your compost bin, collecting your compostable material, and maintaining your compost pile. Once you have your compost bin or pile set up, you’ll need to start adding your material to it, but how do you get your food scraps and other compostable household items, from you house into the compost pile?

You need to have a way to collect those items and easily transport them out to the compost. You could use a bowl on your counter, but you would have to empty it right away, and you might not always have time for that when you’re in the middle of dinner prep. You could keep a container of some type under your sink and next to your garbage, but it could easily get stinky, and attract flies and fruit flies, and you might forget to put things into it, and put them in the garbage instead.

Or you could use a stainless-steel countertop compost bucket like this.

 

Mighty Nest sent me one of these beauties to review. Is is strange that I think a compost bucket is beautiful? Well, you should have seen what we were using before this, it was most definitely not beautiful!

I have to say I was a bit skeptical at first, would this really be better than the reused ice cream bucket that we had been using? The answer is most definitely, YES!

There are several things that I really love about this compost pail, and now that I have it, I could never go back to using our old, nasty plastic bucket!

• It looks nice enough to sit out on our counter, so it’s easier to remember to use it.

My hubs would often forget to put stuff into the compost bucket under our sink, and would throw it into the garbage out of habit. Now that it’s on the counter, it reminds him to actually use it for compost scraps! And it’s so easily accesible.

• I like that it has a lid.

Our old bucket didn’t have a lid, and it was just gross. Gross to look at, gross to smell, and it attracted all kinds of flies and fruit flies, even if we emptied it on a daily basis. Having a lid to cover that stuff up is much better.

• The charcoal filter really does work.

When the lid is on the bucket, you would have no idea about the stinky stuff that is inside. There’s no odor at all! Of course, when you open the bucket to place something in, then – Whew! – the smell is definitely there! I even put stuff in it and let it sit for several days to see if it would still filter the smell, and it definitely did!

• It’s big enough to hold several days worth of scraps.

The bucket is a gallon, which is a pretty generous size. We filled it up for three days before it was full, and even then, I probably could have pushed the stuff down and fit more in. But, I really think you’d want to empty your compost bin more often than every three days!

One thing I did notice is that after several days with fruit sitting in the bottom of the bucket, the lid and the filter didn’t deter the fruit flies completely. But, the first two days the fruit was in the bucket there were no fruit flies at all. So, you’d just need to make sure you empty the bucket more frequently when you have fruit in it. Normally I would have, but I was trying to test it to see how long it could go.

Basically, I love this compost bucket and how much it takes the ick-factor out of collecting food scraps for the compost pile. It’s also super easy to clean, you can even stick it in the dishwasher!

Would you like to win your own compost bucket, along with lots of other awesome stuff worth over $100? Mighty Nest is giving away a complete Essentials for Composting and Shopping at the Farmer’s Market set this week!

You still have a few days to enter! So click over and enter the giveaway today!

What do you use to collect your kitchen scraps for your compost?

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