Quick start: the first week

The first week on one page: log your scraps, list your browns, find out who decides, and write one method on your plan. It works for a freezer bag and a drop-off site as well as for a yard.

This page is the short route through Choose your system and What goes in. Do it once, and the rest of this manual has the facts it needs from you. Nothing here asks you to buy anything.

The week

1. Day 1: start the scrap log. Keep a lidded container in the kitchen (a freezer container works) and write the gallons or cups that go in each day, on the scrap week sheet. Do this for seven days. What goes in explains how.
2. Day 2: list your browns. Write the dry, carbon-rich material you have or can get (leaves, plain cardboard, shredded paper), when in the year it comes and where you would keep it, on the materials sheet.
3. Day 3: describe your place in setup. Say where a system could sit and how much attention you will give it, in setup.
4. Day 4: read the methods table. Open methods compared; with your setup saved, the rows that fit are marked. Read those across.
5. Day 5: find out two things. Who decides whether you can compost outdoors (you, a landlord, an association or the city), and whether your city or county collects food scraps or runs a drop-off. Write what you find on the system plan. Kitchen and collection and Site and bin say how to ask.
6. Day 7: write one method on the plan. Pick one row from the methods table and write it, with the reason in terms of your space, your scraps and your attention, on the plan.

Done when: the scrap log has a week in it, the plan names one method, where it would sit and the reason, and you know who decides.

After the week

Go on to Kitchen and collection (the kitchen container and any program) and Site and bin (site and bin). Then read the chapter for the method you wrote: The slow pile, The hot pile, Worm bins or Bokashi and burying. The others are optional for you.