I've been keeping worms for a few months now, and so far my experience has been very positive. I no longer have to cringe when tossing my veggie trimmings into the landfill-bound trash bucket, and the amount of trash we send to the curb has been reduced. Best of all, it has not noticeably influenced my to-do list or schedule: the worms are in the basement, and I spend about five minutes a week feeding and observing them, usually on my way to or from the laundry.

Near the bin, I keep a bag of autumn leaves left over from the yard, brown and limp from sitting under the snow all winter. The first few times I fed the worms, I dampened some of them and spread them on top of the scraps as bedding. Now I generally just tuck the scraps under the existing leaves, but occasionally I add an extra handful of leaves. I drain any liquid from the reservoir under the bin, and use it to water my veggies. The liquid is pretty smelly, but it's quick to drain off and dump outside.

Speaking of smells, I am even happier that I invested in a commercial bin now, after a few months of use. While the bin generally smells fine unless stirred up, there has been the occasional stinky day in there, and I have been really impressed with how well the bin has contained odors.

One of the fun things about keeping worms is that they are constantly changing. The bin smells different inside every time I open it (ok, fun might be a strong word for that). Sometime the worms are near the surface, sometimes below. Springtails come and go. When the worms find a piece of choice refuse, they swarm on it in a happy little knot. Yet, for all of those changes, the worms are incredibly low-maintenance. They don't care whether I feed them once a week or twice. They didn't miss me when I went on vacation. They decide which scraps to eat and when to eat them on some sort of logic I don't understand. They reproduce and die on their own schedules. And that is fine by me.