The Family Composting Guide for Beginners

We cook from scratch almost every day. That means a lot of vegetable peels, onion skins, cilantro stems, plantain peels, garlic papers, lime halves after squeezing — the scraps pile up fast in a kitchen like ours.

For years all of that went straight in the bin. Then one weekend I looked at the bag we were throwing out and realised it was basically all food scraps and packaging. Half of it didn’t need to be garbage at all.

My wife and I both grew up in homes where this question didn’t exist. Food scraps went to the chickens. What didn’t go to the animals went into a compost heap, which fed the garden, which fed the family. It was a loop that closed on its own. Nobody called it composting. It was just what you did with the peels.

Getting back to that felt right. And I’ll tell you — it was much easier than I thought, and my kids ended up loving it more than I expected.

What composting actually is

You’re not doing anything magic. You’re just creating the right conditions for food scraps to break down naturally — the way they would in a forest, but faster and in a container. After a few months, what was a pile of vegetable peels becomes dark, rich soil that makes plants grow like crazy.

We use ours on our little herb garden and the difference is remarkable.

What goes in and what doesn’t

This part matters. In our kitchen, we compost:

Vegetable and fruit peels and scraps (all of them — onion skins, plantain peels, avocado skins, everything)
Coffee grounds and filters
Tea bags (if they’re not plastic-sealed)
Eggshells
Herbs that have gone off
Paper napkins and cardboard torn into small pieces
Rice and plain pasta

We don’t compost meat, fish, bones, or anything oily or heavily seasoned. Those attract animals and create odors. In a Latin kitchen this is worth remembering — the leftover sofrito, the braised chicken, the beans — those go in the regular bin.

Our three-bin system

Before we get to the composting setup, it helps to understand how we think about waste in general. We run three bins in this house: recycling, compost, and regular trash. Getting those three sorted properly was its own project — and honestly, once it clicked, the compost bin felt like the most natural thing in the world. Most of what used to go to landfill either gets recycled or composted now. The regular trash bin fills up slowly. Sometimes that’s still surprising.

For the composting itself, the system is simple: a small bin on the counter, and a larger one outside.

The counter bin lives next to the sink. While we’re cooking, scraps go in there. My kids know this — even the little ones. When it’s full (usually every day or two), someone takes it outside to the big bin. We gave our youngest this job and she takes it very seriously.

The outdoor bin is where the actual composting happens. We add the food scraps from inside, plus dry stuff — dry leaves, torn cardboard, newspaper. That mix of wet and dry is what makes it work. If it smells bad, add more dry. If nothing is happening, add more food scraps.

Getting the kids involved

My kids were fascinated by composting from day one. The idea that a banana peel can become soil — that’s basically magic to a six-year-old.

What worked for us:

Give them the counter bin job. They take the scraps outside. Simple, concrete, satisfying.
Show them the before and after. Three months later, open the bin together and let them see the transformation.
Plant something with the finished compost. Growing tomatoes or herbs with soil your family made together is genuinely special.

My daughter asked once if the banana peels “go to heaven” when they become soil. I told her yes, kind of. That worked for me.

What about the smell?

A healthy compost doesn’t smell bad — it smells like earth, like a garden after rain. If yours smells rotten, two things: too much wet food scraps (add dry cardboard), or it needs turning (poke it or spin the tumbler). We’ve never had a serious smell problem with the tumbling composter we use — it stays closed and the spinning keeps it aerated.