Burnin' for You!

Hey, guys!

So if you haven't figured it out by now, Tiara and I can become a couple of pyromaniacs when we want to. And, after the wild success of the pine cone fire starter, we decided to do our research and see if there were other effective ways of making fire starters for your emergency kits. Funny story, there are plenty, so today we decided to try out the good ol' dryer lint and Vaseline method. Here's what you do:

First, you need only two supplies for this -- Vaseline and dryer lint. If you're like me, you keep a Costco-sized tub of Vaseline on your desk because your lips get chapped in the winter cold, but if you're not, this Costco-sized tub of Vaseline cost me a whole three bucks. Hip hip hooray for cost effectiveness. As for the dryer lint, I really hope you aren't paying for that.

At this point, I really do recommend wearing gloves. I didn't, and while I'm really quite fine with getting down and dirty and doing whatever, it got a little hairy (pardon the pun, Tiara's dryer lint also came with quite the accompaniment of dog fur). Especially if you're making these in a group (for whatever reason you may be), I would recommend keeping some gloves on hand. At any rate, gloves on or not, all you have to do is scoop out a ball of Vaseline and start mashing it with the dryer lint to incorporate it at least fairly evenly. There aren't really any specific ratios, at least not by my method, so don't think you need to measure anything exactly, but keep fiddling with the Vaseline and lint until you have a saturated but firm ball of fire-starting power. It might even look something like this:

Clearly, any semblance of sanity is not always within my skill set, but as Miss Frizzle put it best for the Magic School Bus, "Take chances! Get messy! Make mistakes!" Obviously you will want to make more than one of these, as you will probably need more than one fire started if you are without power for multiple days at a time, and they store just fine in an old egg carton or zip lock bag! 

And since again, we are Charlotte's resident pyromaniacs, here is the test video. After all, if you checked out Tiara's link to Pinterest Fail, mistakes do happen and we would never want to leave you unprepared in case disaster does indeed strike and you need to start a fire. So without further ado, here is proof that dryer lint and Vaseline (and Blue Oyster Cult, if you're also blasting the namesake of this post) may indeed save your life one day, and do please enjoy our colleague Sara's pretty fantastic interjection at the end:

Peace and blessings, and stay safe, y'all!