When my Lomi finally arrived, I couldn’t have been more excited to dig in and get my hands dirty. But as much as I’d like to say it was a perfect love affair…Lomi and I had a bit of a rocky start.

There were a couple of things right away that I wasn’t expecting. First of all, it took up more counter space than I thought. I was hoping for a nice, petite appliance that would have a permanent place on my counter top. What I got was a pretty big unit that would take up way too much counter space in my small kitchen.

The other thing that surprised me was the noise. It’s true that it’s about the same amount of noise as the dishwasher – although I have a pretty quiet dishwasher – but the cycles are much longer. In fact, in order to run the full compost cycle, it takes around 16 hours. That’s 16 hours of humming, squeaking and sometimes grinding while I’m 20 feet away watching TV, reading, or working.

In any case, I was determined to fall in love with Lomi, and after months of figuring each other out, I think we’re almost there. One of the things that almost made me give up was that despite my first few batches going really well, subsequent batches ended up crusty and stuck to the sides, not resembling any soil I’d ever come into contact with. So I started to experiment.

At first I thought it was broken. What I came to realize was that as I started adding more and more to Lomi, I was changing the composition of the organic material that I was adding. I watched videos, read blogs and checked the FAQs on the Lomi site and then I started changing what I was feeding Lomi. There was one article that talked about having a certain % of brown vs green materials and also not having too many sugary inputs. That was the problem…I needed to perfect the cook.

Coffee was the key for me. So now, every batch has coffee grounds it. Also I run the short ‘Eco Express’ cycle first and get some dirt-ish output that I also add the longer ‘Grow’ cycle to produce the garden ready compost. I’ve also started cutting everything up into smaller pieces that I put into Lomi.

So I’d say now our relationship is blooming! I’m very happy with what I’m getting from Lomi and run a cycle most days. I’ve also changed when I run the cycles so it’s running during work hours and overnight, when I’m least likely to be bothered by the noise. We have a smallish house so unless we hide in our bedroom, we’ll always hear the Lomi hum. I’ve also moved the Lomi down to the basement so I can keep it out all the time. It looks nice on a small table of it’s own.

So, although it took some time for Lomi and I to find our way, I’m really glad I bought it. I’m taking care of most of my own food waste and producing great compost for the garden. It’s definitely a win-win in my books.