Another Great Way to Use Lint!

I was reading some online articles today on reusing items around the house when what did my wandering eyes see?

Dryer Lint

Reuse Household Waste Ideas

Scroll down on this Squidoo article to find this heading.

I love the idea of using dryer lint around the house, and this article has several great ideas including as a fire starter, as seen here, in an earlier lint blog entry. I personally don't have a wood stove or fireplace but I like this recycling idea. I don't usually have a lot dryer lint since my drying rack is my good friend, but it's a great way to use what you have!

Do you reuse your dryer lint for anything? Please share!

Friendly Lint

I went to a friend's house the other day and we were talking about lint (among other things). She said she'd washed and dried a white cotton blanket that really had a lot of lint on it when it came out of the dryer. And it left a lot of lint in the lint filter.

See? That's the lint in her trash can. The brownish lint was already in the lint filter she said then she added the blanket. The white was all from the white blanket. I think it's interesting how different fabrics throw off more lint than others. It makes sense that natural fibers like cotton would offer up more lint. Because have you ever seen a  polyester lint wad? Me neither.

Have any lint stories to share? If so, please do!

Lint Dough

This is a new one to me. Have you ever made modeling dough using dryer lint? Me neither, but this cute feller was crafted from a lint (and a few more ingredients)! Yes sir, this cute elephant was made using dryer lint, water, flour, and vegetable oil.

To get the exact recipe, because if you're going to make a lint elephant, you really should get it right, go to RealSimple's page explaining the easy enough process.

When you think about it, elephants are gray, and dryer lint is gray, unless you just dried your son's orange Denver Broncos fleece blanket (then it is orange, very orange). Elephants are cute animals with nice features (trunk and big ears) that would lend themselves to be crafted out of a sticky lint mess.

So, the next time you have a wad of dryer lint in your hands, what are you going to do? Throw it in the trash? Toss it in the compost pile? Or maybe make a fun elephant?

Please share any stories of dryer lint dough. We'd also love to see pictures!

Photo credit:  Aimee Herring from RealSimple

What did the Lint Filter give up for Lent?

dryer sheets

Put That Lint to Use Already!

I'm always on the lookout for new ways to use lint. This is a perfect one!

Mosaicmom, a writer on eHow, has an article called How to Make Filler for Stuffed Toys that intrigued me. Check out Step 2 of this article and before you know it, lazy Mr. Lint will soon be off the couch working, like he should be. Yes, most lint is male.

Guest Lint -- Coin Laundry No. 1

I was out riding my bike today (yes, really... the high here in Phoenix today is 72 degrees F), and I rode through a parking lot to get off a busy street.

I smelled it before I saw it--laundry soap and fabric softener fumes. The air was scented nicely, not of flowering trees or fruit, but of good old laundry. I looked up and saw the sign:  Coin Laundry. To keep the nice smell a bit longer, I rode around the back and snapped this picture. Lint was trapped against the side of the building, in the grass, just about anywhere leaves would accumulate.

All of the lint I saw was this color--gray. Isn't that amazing that with all the colors of clothes, most lint devolves to gray?

Is Your Lint a Reflection of You?

Maybe, or maybe it's just a reflection of your clothes. I just cleaned my lint filter and this is what I found.

Nothing too exciting as far as lint goes. Not like a good wad of red lint from the dryer after a blanket had tumbled dry, all fluffy and looking like it's missing from Santa's suit. Nope, this is just a grayish-blue wad and on the small size to boot.

Nothing to write home about but good enough for this blog.

I've been wearing a lot of blue and black lately so it's no wonder my lint is this color. It's "winter" here in Arizona and "cold." My "winter" "cold-weather" clothes are mostly black--sweatpants and shirts. Of course, cold and winter are relative terms. I saw the bottom of an orange tree wrapped in a white tarp on my bike ride today. I guess it has been getting a little chilly at night and the owner doesn't want the oranges to freeze. So, if the tarp were washed and dried, I guess the lint would be white. Orange would be prettier.

Belly Button Lint Bears, Oh My!

Etsy is a great marketplace for buying and selling. In fact, it is "Your place to buy & sell all things handmade."

All things homemade, like Teddy bears made of belly button lint. Okay, maybe they're not actually made from belly button lint, but it is LINT! And bettyraecase sells these cute critters in her Etsy shop.

Check out bettyraecase here.

These little fellers are adorable with a capital A! Rachel, the brains behind bettyraecase, describes these guys thusly:

These charming, tiny teddys are made of lint and even have eyes and a nose! They come in a 2.5" glass jar with a cork and label. Each teddy-in-a-jar comes in a black satin satchel to keep them safe and precious.

A great small gag gift for just about anyone who likes to laugh! Wonderful for curiosity collectors! Never fails to start a conversation!

Mice and rabbits coming soon!
~~~
I ask you, what have you made with lint today?

Lint in Word Games

I just spelled 'linty' in Wordscraper, a Scrabble-like game on Facebook.

It was one of those crazy, random boards with all sorts of added squares with 5W, 2W, 3L, etc. values sprinkled in.

Scored 109 points.

Lint rules!

The Lint Filter is born

Lint has always held a special place in my heart. It all started as a child on cold winter days when Mom ran the clothes dryer, which was situated in a corner of the kitchen. The big, white Norge was noisy and tended to walk around its corner of the room a little bit, but a good shove with your hip put it back in its place.

My job, for as long as I can remember, was to remove the length of pantyhose that was affixed to the hose with a rubber band, black with ink from the newspaper. The hose stuck out in the kitchen and I had to remove the lint from that pantyhose. It was like peeling a soft blob of fur from the hide. But not in a gross way; in a warm, fuzzy way, literally.

Before we knew it, we were all grown up and we had clothes dryers of our own. One sister, you know who you are MarySue, did a lot of laundry. It was second nature to us, the other three sisters, to trot down to the basement at her house and empty the clothes (there were always clothes) from the washer into the dryer, or on nice days, haul the clothes out to the clothesline.

One day Doris, the compulsive cleaning sister of the bunch, brought up a wad of dryer lint that was as impressive a specimen as I've ever seen.

Impressive is actually an understatement.

It was large.

As large as a football, maybe even a basketball. How it stayed trapped in the lint filter is baffling. Did MarySue keep a fire extinguisher close by? But Doris freed the lint wad and brought it to the kitchen for all to see! And we took turns feeling its heft, marveling at the colors, analyzing it for hair (or lack thereof) in its mass.

This sealed the deal. Lint has been a favorite in our family ever since.