Finally fixed my smelly indoor compost bin after 8 weeks of guessing wrong

Honestly I thought my countertop compost bin was doomed. I kept adding food scraps but it just turned into a gross wet mess that smelled like rotten trash. Tried adding more brown materials like shredded paper but that barely helped. Then I realized I was putting too much citrus peels in there and throwing off the balance. Took me 8 whole weeks to figure out it was the orange rinds killing the whole thing. Anyone else struggle with specific foods wrecking their small bin?

2 comments

2 Comments

grantthomas25d ago

Yeah the "too much citrus peels" thing caught my eye. I mean most people just hear you need browns and greens and think that's the whole picture, but nobody talks about how certain foods basically nuke the microbes. Citrus has this natural antibacterial thing going on so you're basically poisoning your own compost when you go overboard. I've seen folks online say coffee grounds are great but never mention how they can get moldy and slimy if you add too many at once without mixing them in right. Maybe it's just me but I think people get way too obsessed with perfect ratios when the real trick is just chopping everything smaller and stirring it every couple days.

walker.rowan25d agoTop Commenter

Totally agree with @grantthomas there, I learned the citrus thing the hard way after dumping like five orange peels in one go and my pile just sat there for weeks smelling like a rotten orange grove. The coffee grounds thing gets me too, I always end up with a giant slimy clump because I forget to break it up after pouring it in. Honestly I think half the battle is just not treating compost like a science experiment you need to ace, cause my first batch looked like a crime scene and still turned into dirt eventually.