Turn your old stained or ripped items into something useful!

Today, we're going to be talking about charcloth! Some of you have, probably, never heard of it before. So what is charcloth? It's this!

Charcloth is made of items, typically clothes or towels, that are 100% cotton that you char in a metal container to, essentially, make charcoal. Hence the name, charcloth. Now, this can only be made with 100% cotton items. You cannot use any items with any synthetic material in it. I like this alternative, to just tossing your old stained or ripped clothes. You can even turn old underwear into something useful! This is better for the planet, and helps you be more prepared in a disaster scenario.

The Materials

• Stove/fire

• Scissors/knife

• Altoids tin

• Old 100% cotton clothes/towels

Safety Warnings

• This is recommended for ages 18+, if underage, make sure to get parental supervision and permission.

• I recommend doing this outside, and do your best to keep your distance and don't breathe in the smoke.

• Never leave a fire unattended.

How to make charcloth

• Find the 100% cotton items you want to burn and cut them to size to fit in the Altoids tin. We used our kids' old stained clothes and donated old towels. (You can create posts on Craiglist, Nextdoor, or other similar neighborhood sites/apps asking for 100% cotton items that people are going to trash)

• Next, make sure your Altoids tin is clean and dry, then you're going to want to punch a hole in the top lid of the tin.

• Once you've got everything together, you're going to want to go ahead and put the cloth inside the tin. Make sure that you don't overfill it, or the cloths won't char properly. Stack them up until they touch the lid when it closes.