Uses for Dryer Lint from the Krazy Coupon Lady

My niece just let me know about a cool article called "6 Weird Ways to Recycle Dryer Lint." I was all over that!

You can read the article by clicking the link above, but the one that really stood out to me was using dryer lint to make papier-mache! Makes sense and I bet it works really well, too!

I hope you had a good Christmas and have a linty new year! Here are some lint rollers to keep you lint free, if that's how you roll.


Scotch-Brite Lint Roller, 5 Count, 95 Sheets

The Daring Ladies of Lowell by Kate Alcott

I've had shingles for a week now and had, what my doctor thought was a sore or blister near my right eye. So, I've been having to wear gauze over my eye during the day and an eye patch at night. This one-eyed situation made it really hard to do certain things, like read!



So, I figured out, with my daughter's help, how to download an audiobook onto my iPad to listen to instead of reading an actual book. I quickly chose The Daring Ladies of Lowell by Kate Alcott from my library using the Overdrive app. I am loving this book!

Last night while lying in bed, they mentioned lint. The ladies work in a textile mill in 1832 in Lowell, Massachusetts so there is lint flying from the cotton used to make the fabric. I didn't catch the sentence since I was listening, instead of reading, but it was a wonderful use of the word lint and had to share it with you.

If you like historical fiction (and lint), you can't go wrong with The Daring Ladies of Lowell.

Lint in Literature: Torch by Cheryl Strayed

I just started reading Torch by Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild, and what did I find on the very first page? Lint! Yes! I was tickled pink.


Here it is:

"She examined her shirt for lint and cat hair, errant pieces of thread, and primly picked them off."

I'm only on page 29 of this novel but am loving it already.

What are you reading? Does it have any lint in it?

Lint in Literature: The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

I just started reading The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd a few days ago. It's wonderful. Right up there with the Secret Life of Bees (The Mermaid Chair, not so much).

Anyway, on page 63 there's this wonderful reference to our friend lint:

When she saw the tea trays Aunt-Sister left in the warming kitchen for Cindie to take up, she would drop whatever bit of nastiness she could into the teapot. Dirt off the floor, lint off the rug, spit from her mouth. I told Miss Sarah, stay clear of the tea trays.

Ha ha! Love that!


Do you have a good lint story to share?

Navel Gazing and Belly Button Lint

I know I've been neglectful of my lint blog, but I've been busy. I have not, as the title of this blog post might suggestion, been doing any navel gazing and no, I don't have belly button lint but in an attempt to write a new blog post, I searched for "belly button lint" because it's always a fun topic to spend a few minutes on.

I came across this article by the Huffington Post called This Is What Your Belly Button Says About You. It's chockfull of information about what the shape of our belly buttons say about us, touches on a few people who do not have belly buttons (they were removed in surgeries; they are not aliens), and the ever-popular belly button lint. So take a few minutes to read some of those strange facts, if you like. 

And if that's not enough, there's a book out called Re:  Belly Button Lint by Brooke West. I have a feeling it's not entirely about navel fluff, but I found it interesting that there's a book with belly button lint in the title!

Lint in Literature: Two Sisters by Mary Hogan

I'm reading the novel Two Sisters by Mary Hogan and came across this bit of lint in literature last night:

Lidia replied, "Black isn't as slimming as everyone says it is." Then she added, "That white napkin will leave lint all over your pants."
~*~

At first I wasn't so sure about this book about two sisters with eight years difference between them, but the more I read it, the better I like it.

Lint in Literature: The Writing Circle by Corinne Demas

I was reading the tail end of The Writing Circle by Corinne Demas last night and spotted some lint:

Under her tutelage he flossed, he cleaned his ears with Q-Tips, in the shower he spread the cheeks of his buttocks and washed with soap, he filed his fingernails, clipped his toenails, spread petroleum jelly between his littlest toes, where the skin had a tendency to flake, and removed lint from his belly button.

~*~

Is that a lovely description of tidying up?

Lint in Literature: The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls

I just started reading Jeannette Walls' latest book last night and love it! In case she doesn't ring any bells, she wrote the so-good memoir The Glass Castle. If you haven't read it, do! It's wonderful.

So, as I was reading along, the word "linthead" was used several times. Then it was explained! Here's that passage:

"Charlie was a fling, as far as she was concerned. Charlotte was pretty shaken up when that wastrel, Liz's father, decided he didn't want to be a father after all. She went through a wild-divorcee period and got involved with a number of men whom Mother and Father disapproved of. Charlie was one of them. She never considered marrying him. The way she saw it, he was just a linthead."

"What's that?" I'd heard Mom use the word, but I didn't know what it meant.

"A millworker. They come off their shifts covered in lint."

~*~

Isn't that perfect!? I think so. 

Lint in Literature: The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner

I'm reading The Forest for the Trees:  An Editor's Advice to Writers by Betsy Lerner and loving it! Since it's nonfiction, I'm just dipping into it as I have a few minutes so I'm only on page 80. So far, so good!

Today I read this passage where Lerner is discussing types of writers (this chapter is about the self promoter):

I discovered that allegations of professional misconduct had attached themselves to this writer like lint.

I love that analogy. Lint does have a way of sticking where it doesn't belong. 

Lint in Literature: Freud's Mistress

I came across the word lint in the latest book I'm reading, Freud's Mistress by Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman. Here's the passage (Martha is Sigmund Freud's wife):

As the noise level rose, Martha flitted back and forth into the kitchen, checking on the biscuits, the beef, getting this child a glass of water, that child a napkin, removing an elbow or a leg from the arm of a chair, and, at one point, bending over and picking up a wad of lint from the floor.

I like his book, but in places it reads like a history lesson. The story is based in fact but is a historical fictional account of Freud and his sister-in-law Minna, who many feel had an affair.

Lint in Literature: Stella Bain by Anita Shreve

I finished this novel a few days ago and toward the end, came across our favorite word:  lint!

"He sets his teacup down. 'Well,' he says, picking off an imaginary piece of lint from his trousers, 'I'm in the middle of changing professions. Now that the war is over, there is, happily, less demand for cranial surgery. I'm reading psychiatry, which can't be a complete surprise to you."

I really enjoyed this book about memory loss and women during World War I or The Great War as it was called at the time, having no second world war to begin the numbering scheme.

Oh, I also changed my furnace air filter today, which was full of dust and lint. Do you need to change yours?