Go Camping – Life’s An Adventure

If you like to use wax firestarters for your campfires, they’re pretty easy to make yourself and it’s likely you have almost everything you need to make them in your trash can!

There are three key items needed to make your own homemade firestarters:

an empty egg carton
lint from your dryer
a taper candle

You will also need matches or a lighter to light the candle and an airtight plastic container or storage bag to store the finished firestarters.

To make the firestarters:

Put a little of the dryer lint in each compartment of the egg carton.

Light the taper candle and drip wax on top of each compartment – enough to create a seal over the top of the lint.

Cut the sections of the egg carton apart and store them in an airtight container or plastic storage bag in your camper, RV or camping supplies storage totes.

Then, the next time you’re ready to start a campfire, place one of the homemade firestarters underneath the kindling, light a corner of it, and in just a few minutes you’ll be enjoying your campfire.

These also work great for starting fires in patio fire pits, outdoor fireplaces, and chimineas.

I love candles. No matter how many I have, I’m always ready to buy more. But, I have never taken them camping with me because of fire safety concerns. I considered using an electric wax melter but it still creates hot wax.
Now, I realize I can have candles again because there’s now flameless ones available. I haven’t bought any yet, but they seem like a great idea and the price isn’t too bad. The ones pictured here are available from Camping World for around $10 each. They’re lit by a LED light that flickers and glows like a real candle flame. The candles are wax and are scented but the LED light doesn’t get hot enough to make the wax melt which eliminates the fire hazard and the mess of melted candle wax. The LED light is supposed to last 100,000 hours but I don’t know how long the scent lasts. My guess is that the scent won’t last nearly that long, but if scent lasts 2 months it’s just as long as my $20 Yankee Candle jar candles last.

The candles pictured are 4″, use 3 AAA batteries, and are available in either apple, harvest or pear. They seem like good scents but I would really like one that has a vanilla scent. I’ll look around. If I find one, I post a link to it.

Now, when it’s raining outside, you can have a romantic night inside your camper with “candlelight!”

I enjoy camping, but am a little bit of a neat freak so for me it’s a necessity to have a vinyl tablecloth to put on our picnic table when we go camping. I use inexpensive, supposedly rust resistant, steel tablecloth clamps like these that are available from Camping World but mine rust after only a few uses which creates unsightly stains on my tablecloth that I have a hard time getting rid of.

I’ve tried coating the clips in clear fingernail polish but it wears off really fast.
I also tried some plastic ones that I found at my local dollar store but some of them broke the first time I used them.

I end up replacing my tablecloth every year because I hate how it looks with the rust stains on it.

Today, I came across these Camco Tablecloth clamps . They’re not supposed to rust at all – instead of being rust resistant they’re rustproof, but the downside is they cost about $10 for 4 of them versus the rust resistant ones that I get in a 6-pack for less than $2. I’d need two packages of the Camco ones.

I’m wondering if anyone has used these and if they’re worth the money?