.....if, while walking the dog, you notice that someone has dumped their fall display by the side of the road, up hill from home. So, in spite of the fact that it is snowing heavily, you go back and forth between the pile & home with your garden cart, eventually hauling home 5 huge potted chrysanthemums, 2 pumpkins, a bucket of gourds and 3 bales of hay. Only fell once. I just HAD to get this stuff before it froze to the ground!

Bice score Mommyandme.

Everytime I take the trash out I sort it, my compost bins are right next to the trash can. After sorting out glass wine bottles recyclable plastic and compostables, there is not that much left to throw away.
I am a urine saver. I keep 1/2 gallon containers in each bathroom and use this to moisten the compost.
You know if you are a compost wacko when you spouse starts to report how the piles are doing when you are out of town. Today I got a report that my pile of leaves and coffee grounds doesn't seem to be shrinking anymore I have been adding to it and keeping it topped for 3 months.

...where I get my gardening clothes.
You can get cotton tops & shorts & jeans very cheap, & when they're just too awful to wear even in the garden (they usually lose buttons, or the zipper breaks, or some such), you can compost them.

As I was leaving, I saw 2 bags of leaves sitting by the dumpster.

went back in & asked the cashier, "y'all throwing away those leaves?"

(Well, you never know, they *might* have thought they could sell them to compost wackos...)

The lady said someone in the neighborhood must have dropped them off & assured me that I was welcome to them.

You might be a compost wacko if you pick up OPBL at the thrift store!

if while out with two toddlers for a walk, and you see (pre-shredded!!) leaves bagged by the nieghbors. You immediately eject the oldest one (age 2 and a better walker) out of the double stroller so that:
(a.) there is more room to stack OPBL in the stroller around the younger child, and
(b.) so the older child can be bribed and/or forced (depending on her mood) to drag a bag or two back to our place once the stroller's full, and I can't drag any more.

If when peeing at you're at work, you're sad to see the pee wasted in a toilet when it could be softening up a pile of shredded junk mail at home.

If Tuesday is exciting, because that's the day before trash day and you can skulk around looking in your neighbors' green bins to see if there's anything good.

If Saturday is exciting, because that's the night you go to the produce market dumpster and pick up 40-gallon bags of greens!

If your husband loves you a little bit more because he hates taking trash cans to the curb but luckily your crazy compost wacko tendencies mean that he never-ever has to drag the green bin out to the curb anymore (as IF I'd give away my organic material to the city!), and that the black trash and blue recycling bins are (a) light as a feather, and (b) don't even need to go out most weeks.

I think my wife has become a wacko...
Her parents had 9 bags of leaves. She scored them all but somehow convinced her dad to let her keep 5 of the bags IN THEIR GARAGE until we had space in the pile for them.
Then today she ran the snowblower out to the pile so it'd be easier to add.

She wants me to build a commode in the basement that empties into a 5 gallon jerry can so we can more easily collect urine for the pile. She wants it to include a trap so it doesn't smell.

Just a couple that comes to mind.

You take daily trips to Starbucks but you never drink coffee.

You spread compost on your lawn to make it grow quicker, so you can cut your lawn sooner, so you can put the cut greens in the compost bin, to make compost, to spread on the lawn.....repeat.

You help your son and his Boy Scout troop sell Christmas trees, so you can go around all the trees with your leaf blower on reverse with a bag attachment, so you can collect all the needles that fall off the trees. And maybe even give those trees a little shake once in awhile to get more needles to fall. Of course you tell everyone it's to keep the area looking neat and clean for the customers.

You caress your compost to see how warm it's getting. Then you bring your 3 yr old out to the heap and stick him in elbow-deep too so he can feel the heat. Then when Daddy gets home, both you and the 3 yr old wax poetic about good germs that make dirt and heat up the pile... Oh, well- at least I washed his hands afterward.

Or when your kid tells you he has to pee and you yell "Pee on the leaves- hurry!!!"

The worst kind of insanity is the kind you pass on to your kids.

I've done most of the previous.
Last night, I clipped my nails, gathered them and threw them in an old Starbucks coffee bag where I keep my kitchen scraps.
This is my first year composting and in the current season my goal is to get the pile steaming.

Pete

Your houseguests bring food that you don't care for, but you are genuinely delighted because the pile will love it!

...when you go down to the town composting site, and one of the other residents tells you that "you're the first person they've seen taking away bags of leaves, instead of dropping them off."

...when you're on a first-name basis with the people who work at the local convenience mart, because you're collecting their coffee grounds (with filters) in 5-gallon buckets each week.

...when your son finds a large 24 ounce cup of pee sitting on the kitchen counter one morning that you forgot to dump the night before. "MOM! What is this??" Busted! Next I try to explain why I collect the pee "it's for the compost pile, and to pour on the stumps to help them decompose, because it's high in nitrogen...blah blah blah" (and hope he's not going to tell his friends or his counselor at school that his Mom pees into a cup at home!)

...and then try to propose to DS that I would love for him to "pee in a bottle" or go out to pee directly on the compost pile or the lasagne beds or to mark the gardens for the deer, etc. He hasn't quite signed up for that yet though! :)

When your composting efforts bring people together. This fall the mail lady, who had taken my wife's rug hooking class, and who bought produce from us this summer, called to say the senior's home was getting rid of the giant pumpkin from their fall display, and she thought we might want it for our compost pile. We picked it up, they thanked us, we took it home. Since it was so big and still in good shape we kept it on the front deck for a while for the amusement of the kids. It was one of those pale orange Howard Dill giant pumpkins that look like they've been dropped from a great height. One day the neighbour's toddlers came over and we had a big laugh shoving it off the porch, betting on whether the fall would crack it - it didn't - then rolled it like a snow ball down lawn, then handed out markers and let them draw on it. It sat on the lawn for another few weeks before I carted it off to the pile.

You love to plunge your hands into the compost and smell your hands for those lingering scents all day.

You might be a compost wacko when you realize that a bag'o'raisenetes smells a lot like a pre-composted mountain of leaves on a brisk winter day.
ialbtc

Laughing at all the other parents of kids who have been busted too when kids have discovered the 'whiskey in the jar' for the compost heap.

... look forward to the neighbor's horse pooping on your road.

LOL
Merry Christmas hoe, hoe, hoe

While driving down I-95 in Georgia, you observe workers tearing up trees and undergrowth (roots and all) that are growing too near the road, then grinding it all into huge piles of shredded wood, soil, and leaves, and you wonder if you could get them to deliver a few truckloads of that to your house after Christmas.

..if you use the liquid from the kitchen sauce pan (diluted with some water to cool it down with) after you have steamed your veggies to water your house plants (not directly compost but same idea, LOL).

For that matter, the liquid you have boiled any vegetable in as well (if you're not making stock.)

Ever since I started doing this, I don't have a problem neglecting to water my indoor plants.

When it's not as cold as it is right now, I've been known to use the liquid to pour on my compost pile, too though it is a farther walk and sometimes, I need to proceed with cooking supper so don't always have the time for the walk (or inclination to dirty another pot for holding it, guess I'm not as much of a wacko as I thought I was, LOL)

...if none of this sounds wacko. Are you saying there are people who don't do this stuff?

You might be a compost wacko if you accumulate so many still-useable second-hand trash bags that you give them away.

When, during the first serious cold snap in 15 years, with night temps around 0ºF and daytime around 20ºF and a foot of snow and the frozen solid compost pile a frostbite inducing distance, you come to the brilliant conclusion that starting a pile, right outside the kitchen door under the lilac bush, is just the ticket, and it will work fine once things thaw.

David: a few years ago, I did that one winter, but it was under the elderberry bush. By spring it was all gone & the elderberry bush really benefitted from the extra attention. Hope your lilac enjoys the "snack".