I keep a small bin in my laundry room for storing the dryer lint. Since we do a lot of laundry, we get a lot of that grayish, pinkish fluffy stuff. Did you know you can reuse that lint?
As part of the greater effort to close the loop in my own home (ie, keep trash to a minimum, reuse my household wastes as resources), I have been feeding my lint into the compost bin - my Earth Machine (see previous article on this site). After all, the bin instructions said I could do this. And I feel better keeping one more thing in the cycle of life, so to speak. My lint will become part of a tree.
Then I read an article about fire starting, where Colleen O'Brien writes of how dryer lint makes a fabulous sparker in adverse conditions. She says to stuff a film canister with all the lint you can squeeze in (several dryer loads can be stuffed in if you try); then fill a second canister with vaseline-smeared cotton balls. She writes that lighting the lint, even in the worst wet conditions, will bring enough heat to start the cotton balls...which will flare long enough for your kindling to catch. I've tried this in the miserable soggyness of Northern Minnesota, and can vouch for its effectiveness.
A reader wrote in to add this:
I got a slightly easier version of using lint to start fires. We
used dryer lint to start fires in Boy Scouts. Just stuff an empty
egg carton with lint then pour in candle wax. You can break off
each section as you need it.
Maybe you can even use this technique in the home, as in your fireplace or woodburning stove, for a quick and easy start to your roaring indoor fire. Or put some lint in your homemade candles, to keep them burning brightly.
I got thinking about other uses for lowly dryer lint. It's not a savory item. I wouldn't really want to stuff a pillow with it, even though it's clean (obviously, it's been through a washer before that dryer). It's not a particulary nice thing for packaging...who would like to open a box from eBay and get a lot of lint protecting their fragile items?
As a mulch, it might be suitable. If you have a small veggie garden, even a container one on the balcony, you could probably lay the lint around your plants to keep moisture in and prevent weed growth. I would only try this in the drier areas, since I have visions of mold growing in lint mulch, for those who live in humid states.
It might be a good addition to worm bins - vermiculture. I have not tried it yet. Let me know if you do.
Lately I've been putting the lint wads in my guinea pig nesting box. They do seem to like it - it's warm, clean and cuddly, and looks JUST LIKE the nesting box material that you can purchase at places like PetSmart.
A few sites online report that lint makes great clay, paper and paper mache. Lint crafting even has its own website here, with recipes - great recycle crafts. The basic materials seem to be lint, water and wheat, for the papermache; and lint, water and glue for the clay and homemade paper.
One website recommends placing lint on tree branches, so birds can use it for nests. This actually sounds like a nice idea.
Getting into the odd territory: here's a website with pictures of someone's lint dryer "Pets" - Lint Dryer Pets. I guess fashioning shapes out of your lint is better than staring at the walls when bored.
This artist has even taken lint art into the studio - The National Lint Project. Coming to a laundromat near YOU.
Um, okay. I'm already out of ideas. I'll add more if I think of anything. But it's still a good exercize in creativity. What humble home wastes can YOU reuse?
More Things to Check out
- Funny Lint Site - My Lint Collection. Good for a giggle.
- Online Lint Weirdness - Lint, the Musical
- Finally, here's a book that hasn't been released yet, but I am excited to see what ideas it might have for closing the loop in the home, whether it mentions lint or not:
Household Waste (Recycle, Reduce, Reuse, Rethink)
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