Easy homemade fire-starters

James and I LOVE to camp... so we do it often. Last summer we went camping through the beautiful states of California and Oregon and had the time of our lives. HOWEVER, we also learned a lot of very valuable lessons:

1. Carry a gun. You never know when you might need to protect yourself from other people or animals.
2. Carry bear spray. Better safe than sorry and we had a handgun which wouldn't help much from a pissed off bear so this was our plan if we had issues with one
3. Don't camp in such a remote camp spot that there is no one else around you, you're next to a RUSHING creek (so noisy you almost have to yell over it), and are in such a heavily populated bear area that you had to sign a waiver to not sue if there was a bear attack when you're not armed (common sense kicked in at about 9pm and we packed back up and left. Forget that. lol!)

Note: we did two separate almost week-long trips... the first taught us to carry the gun and spray. for the second.

4. Buy a griddle for a bbq and use it over campfire pits for ease of cooking food like french toast, meats, and veggies.
5. Carry several lighters, lots of paper products to burn, and fire-starters to use if all else fails (wind was our biggest enemy that trip)
 6. Pack all of your camping supplies in large Rubbermaid type totes. It is a lifesaver when it rains since you don't have to worry about cardboard boxes getting soaked.

I'm sure we learned several other things but those were the biggest. We both have extensive camping backgrounds but there are "little" things that you learn through experience.

SO on to how we made fire-starters:

Supplies needed:
Cardboard egg container (we used one from an 18ct pack of eggs)
Shredded/ fine cut paper
Dryer lint
Wax

Directions:
We had extra wax left over from when we made candles for our wedding so we used that wax here. We melted the wax in a double burner while getting the rest of the supplies ready.

We didn't have any shredded paper for some reason so I cut up scrap paper from the recycling bin

I put a little bit of paper in the bottom of each egg carton cup followed by dryer lint (no joke, I work at a hotel and went and collected the dryer lint from the laundry facility we have on site for guests for a week since we didn't have enough at home hahaha..... also, I shed hair a lot so you can see my lovely blonde strands sticking out from the lint. Since hair burns anyways, I wasn't concerned lol). 

I packed the dryer lint in the best I could and when the wax was finally all melted i used a cheap throw-away ladle that we had on hand to scoop and pour wax into each container.

NOTE: put containers on paper towels as the wax WILL go through the cardboard. 

I let them cool in the garage overnight by the camping totes so that we wouldn't forget to put them in there. When we needed them the next time we went camping, we just broke off one at a time and light it with a lighter (one of the days was really windy so i threw three in to make sure we maintained a steady flame and at first I felt bad for "wasting it" but then I remembered how cheap they were to make so I didn't feel bad anymore ;) haha.

Enjoy!
-B