If you have space for two 5-gallon buckets, you can easily compost your kitchen scraps. One bucket should have a mix of soil and dry shredded leaves and/or dry sawdust and/or dry shredded paper. The other bucket is your composter and should be kept in a warmish, dry, darkish area. Under the sink or in the furnace room or behind the boots in the closet.

Fold newspaper until you have a 1/2" layer covering the bottom of the composter; cover that with 1/2" of the soil mix. I use 3 pages of newspaper to catch the kitchen scraps, dampen the scraps slightly and fold to make a non-spilling packet (coffee grounds don't need this). put in the bucket and cover with enough soil mix so you can't see the paper. Repeat as needed.

If you used commercial soil, you can put a lid over the composting bucket, but there really should never be any smell more than that of the soil mix. If -like me- you used soil from the garden, then you may have captured an earthworm or two. It's really neat if you do have a worm. You won't see it [unless you dig around] but it will make lovely castings. Cover each bucket with piece of lightweight cloth and tie snugly with ribbon, string, bungee cord or a huge rubber band. This is so that air circulates but the worm can't escapt. To be honest, the only time I saw a worm climb to the surface was once when DH poured a cup of hot coffee into the bucket. That was one unhappy worm. Make it a rule to not dump liquids into the composter!

How often to empty the bucket depends on how much stuff you put into it. I empty mine about every other month except for late summer when there are extra scraps during canning season. Dig a hole about a trowel's length deep and dump the bucket upside down into your garden. The garden will finish composting the freshest material [which is at the bottom of the hole.

If the bucket ever smells bad, the contents are probably too wet. Stir in torn-up newspapers until the mix seems more dry than wet. That's the other good part of adopting an earthworm... if it's on the surface, it's trying to tell you to use more newspaper and less water.

Good method!

If your compost smells, the problem could also be too much "green" (nitrogenous) material, such as kitchen scraps.

Just add more "brown" (carbonaceous) material, such as
shredded leaves/shredded paper/torn-up cardboard (cardboard is much easier to tear if you get it wet first).

Simple tip for balancing compost mixtures:

If it smells, add browns.

If it ain't doin' nuthin' (not shrinking/breaking down), add greens.

It should be about as damp as a wrung-out sponge.

If you expand your compost operation, or need more tips, gardenweb has a Soil, Compost, & Mulch Forum that I've found very friendly & helpful.

Have fun!

...that you don't have to add soil at all unless you want to.

It probably acts as a "starter", like a sourdough bread starter, providing the initial supply of micro-organisms, but lots of people make compost with just compost materials.

& you can let the compost finish indoors rather than emptying it into the garden.

Here is a link that might be useful: Soil Compost & Mulch Forum

We have two compost piles. One is for animal bedding (sheep, goat, chicken). I have two bins, about ten by ten. I alternate years putting the bedding in each, then remove the oldest in the fall onto the gardens and till it in next spring.

For the kitchen stuff, until last year when I built a fancy slatted wood gizmo, we just put it in a little pile behind the house. The scraps go on the top; the compost develops on the bottom. Simple. It's the same way nature makes compost: just drop it on the ground and let it happen. Animals steal stuff: sure. Then they poop "nitrogenous material" somewhere else. It's a sharing thing, I guess.

Why don't you just put the scraps directly into the garden?

I put all kitchen scraps directly into the soil each night. Granted I have raised beds for my veggies and are always in the sun, but I moved the soil from the middle of the bed to the outer perimiter of the bed and I put all they chopped leaves from my yard (courtesy of my blower/vac) on the beds. When I put the scraps out ther, I just cover with the leaf mold, that stuff breaks down rapidly!