A compost bin is a box, not a bag of compost
I am not selling compost, and I am not writing a recipe. The decision is the bin. I once stood a thin plastic dalek on a soft patch by the fence because that was the gap. By the second winter the bin had leaned, the hatch had snapped, and I was lifting the whole cone off a slumped heap. The heap was not the failure. The hardware was.
On a small UK plot that usually means a plastic dalek or a wooden bay. They fail in different ways.
A plastic dalek is a conical bin with a lid and, if you are lucky, a hatch near the base. I would check the lid actually stays on in wind, and that the hatch opens after a year of weather. Cheap lids fly. Cheap hatches snap at the hinge. If there is no hatch, you are lifting the whole bin off the heap, which is how the plastic splits. I have split one. The crack starts at a screw hole or at the rim you heave on.
A wooden bay is a box. It needs a board you can remove to get at the heap, and uprights that do not rot out at soil level in two winters. I would stand it on earth, not on a solid slab that holds a lake underneath, and I would leave enough room behind it to turn or to empty. A pretty fence-panel bay with no access is a planter you cannot get into. Screws that rust solid in the first winter turn a wooden bay into a sealed crate. I would use fittings I can undo with a wet hand, and I would keep a spare board.
Site matters more than colour. I want it on level ground, out of the main path, with space to get a barrow in. Against a neighbour fence is how you start a rodent hotel and a damp stain on their gravel boards. A lid or a close-fitting cover keeps the heap wet enough and the rats less interested. Open heaps still work. They also feed foxes. I like a lid I can lift with one hand while the other holds a trug.
I would also check how the bin comes apart. A dalek that is one moulded piece cannot be moved once it is full. A bay I can lift a front board from is one I can empty with a fork. That fork is the tool in A fork and a spade are not the same digging tool. If I cannot get the tines through the hatch, the bin is a display. Measure the opening with a fork in your hand, not with a brochure.
The bin is for what will rot. It is not a skip. Plastic pots, wire, and wet cardboard that was a box of hardware do not belong in it. I keep a crate for the stuff that will not break down. If that crate is fuller than the bin, I am using the bin as a hiding place.
Skip a bin sold with no volume and no width. Measure the gap. If the dalek is wider than the path to the spot, you will not get it there without lifting it over a bed. Skip "composters" that are just a bag with a drawstring. That is not hardware. That is a sack that splits. Skip a bay kit with no stated timber size and no mention of how the front opens.
This is year-round kit, but autumn is when it earns the floor space. Cuttings from September cut-back is a tool choice have to go somewhere. Leaves and spent stems will fill a small dalek in a week if you have been putting it off. Spring is when you want to get finished material out, which is when the hatch and the fork matter. Winter is a lid and a quiet heap. I would rather empty in a dry spell than dig a frozen mass through a snapped hatch.
I do not need two bins if I will not turn either of them. I need one box I can open, empty, and put back. That is worth the space. A second decorative cone is not.
If I later add a buy link here, it will be a paid promo.