Fall is here. The cooler weather has not only increased our hot chocolate consumption, but it has made fires in the fireplace a regular event. Which means it is time to split fire wood, and time to make fire starters. I'll leaving the splitting to my husband, but yesterday I experimented with some homemade fire starters.
Fire starters are not a necessity. The fire can be started using newspaper, but that requires keeping kindling wood on hand. It is much easier to just have a slow burning fire starter on hand, and to start the fire with that and the logs.
Last year I made my fire starters with drier lint, wax, and egg cartons. Find the how to at Dryer Lint Fire Starters. These work wonderfully, but Suz of Family Makes Cents suggested an even easier way to make them. Yesterday I tried her suggestion.
How simple is this? Just put dryer lint into a toilet paper roll and burn. I cut my rolls in half to stuff. My first attempt didn't work so well. They did not burn. The second attempt I stuffed the roll loosely with dryer lint. It worked so much better, burning nice and slow to light the logs.
I think we will be making all our starters this way this year. In fact, I think this would be a great project to set the kids loose on some afternoon. They will be able to make up a bunch of these in no time at all!
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We heat our home 90% with our wood stove.. I am the official 'fire keeper' and use dryer lint a lot to start the fire. You are so right... LOOSE is the key when packing it. My sister told me about dryer lint a few years ago and it works like a charm! Thanks for spreading the word... I sometimes forget about sharing these everyday things I do....
ReplyDeleteHeather
Very interesting, I would have never thought of that!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for posting this wonderful firestarter method. I've now been saving all my dryer lint and using it to start our woodstove. It's a wonderful and helpful way to get the heat going in the house.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great idea. Just make sure you are using lint from natural clothing (cotton, linen, hemp, etc.) rather than synthetic. Otherwise, you are basically burning plastic, which is pretty toxic.
ReplyDeleteGreat idea! Illegal here unles you're one of the rare people to own a house with a wood-burning fireplace, but it's also not cold here in the desert, either! I will pass this idea on to some friends who could use it, though!
ReplyDelete