This happened two weekends ago in a day of productive fervor. Then I was too tired to think about it.
We copied John of YHL and made a compost bin out of old pallets–our pallets are waaay older than John’s which either makes us vintage and cool or janky and ghetto. Take your pick (I encourage you to pick the former). Yes, after raking the front and back lawn and taking the leaves to the dump, I noticed a pile of pallets behind an old building. We snagged a few and were frankly a little paranoid about getting in trouble. Cops out here are bored and always looking for something to do.
Unfortunately, our ancient pilfered pallets came in an interesting variety of shapes and sizes (including a cute and useful mini pallet) so the finished product looks much less polished than our PINspiration (yep, I went there). Also it doesn’t help that the photo looks like I took it on my cell phone… Come on camera, I know (at least I thought) you can (could) do better.
We attached the sides and the backs with (surprisingly expensive) L brackets at the top and bottom. You can spy one there in the photo. We had a hinge leftover from our other pallet project (they sell them in pairs but we needed 3 for the room divider) and we hinged the mini one for a kind of door. It’s a little wobbly and eventually we’ll strengthen and stabilize it with a second hinge.
All in all the project came in at $8. I thought $2 each was steep for L brackets but what do I know?
As for the stuff inside it, I didn’t really research composting so… if I’m doing anything wrong, world, please feel free to let me know. Inside the heap are lots and lots of leaves, some of them I’d raked into a pile a month ago and didn’t bag up… smelled like potting soil when I shoveled it up to transfer, which I think is a good sign. Also included is some paper, kitchen scraps (vegetables and coffee grounds) and a leftover half-bag of real potting soil. And I mixed it up well.
So… what do you think? It’s nice keeping some stuff out of the trash can…
My Friend Staci 