You all know that I love a good art project – even more so if it uses up things that would normally go to the landfill. This week, he made a batch of fire starters for the wood stove!
We save the lint from our dryer (a box lives in the windowsill right next to our dryer: we just put the lint in the box each time we run a load). We save all the used-up candles (I love burning candles, but even a really good, expensive candle leaves behind wax that cannot be burned). We save all of our old egg cartons (we do give some to my nieces who have chickens, but he does love his eggs, so we have a lot of containers).
To remove the wax from the candle container, just pour boiling water in each jar. The wax then melts and rises to the top. You simply pick it off once it’s cooled down and solidified again. (remember to recycle the glass jars once you’ve removed the wax!) Then you place all that wax into a large can, which is then placed into a pot of boiling water. Melt it down till its liquid, then pour a small amount into each dimple (that’s Wikipedia’s official word for the compartments in an egg container – I looked it up!). Place some lint on top of each puddle of wax before it solidifies. Then pour more wax over the top of the lint. Continue layering wax and lint until the dimple is full or you’ve run out of supplies.
Place the filled egg cartons on a cooling rack and let stand until the wax is cooled and solid. Cut the dimples apart and store in a basket nearby your stove (but not too close or they’ll melt!). You can see that cutting the dimples apart is not quite as easy as it sounds – we ended up having to get a hand saw for some of them!
Voila! Homemade Fire Starters!
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