Happy Lint

I walked into my room and proclaimed, "I have an idea for lint!"

My roommate thought I said, "I have an idea for Lent!"

Neither of these statements makes much sense.

My mother has always saved lint from the dryer and made it into fire starters. She stuffs lint into egg cartons, pours wax over it and you have compact cubes of lint to use in your fire. That's the first thing to learn about lint: it is incredibly flammable.

I knew that my mom was not the average mother; I didn't know anybody else who saved lint but I wasn't really bothered by it. Until this year when I first had to wash my clothes away from home. My room is conveniently located near the laundry room and I really don't mind doing wash.

One thing I do mind is throwing away anything that can be reused or recycled. After months of throwing lint into the trashcan, I decided that there had to be more to life.

There is. I discovered a whole host of ideas about what to use lint for. I'll share my favorite recipe with you:

Make Lint Clay!

• Cover 3 cups of lint with 2 cups of water in a saucepan.
• Slowly stir 1 cup of flour.
• Add a few drops of vegetable oil.
• Stir over low heat until the mixture binds together.
• Pour onto a sheet of wax, parchment, or newspaper to cool.
• After you're done molding it, the clay may take 3-7 days to dry.

You can just as easily make lint papier mache (which is very similar to clay, just use about 2/3 c flour), lint paper (just add lint to your paper pulp, it won't stand well on its own), lint animals (be careful, they're flammable!), and lint firestarters.

Most importantly, lint is compostable. So don't throw it in your trashcan! Put it outside, let it fertilize your garden or just compost in a corner of your garden or behind a bush. Hopefully we'll get the point that we all create more trash than we need to we'll make an effort to reduce unnecessary waste!