Before the modern electric dryer, times were tough for the lint artist. There just weren’t enough belly buttons to go around for an ample supply of that fluffy, cottony goodness. Let’s not even get started on the lengths the cavemen had to travel to find it.

Todays modern life gives us refrigerators that keep our food cold, washing machines that clean dirty clothes, and more dryer lint than we know what to do with. The good news is that people will never run out of ideas on what to do with the things they don’t feel like throwing away. The bad news is, no matter how much it may remind you of the good ol’ days with grandpa at the carnival, you probably shouldn’t sniff that pink lint that’s left behind after drying all those cozy, red flannels.

Here’s a few things that you can do with your dryer lint if you just don’t have the heart to part with it.

FIRE STARTER - The first thing to note about dryer lint is that it is flammable. Aside from the fact that your dryer will run more efficently if its lint trap is cleaned before every load, With that said, you can use this lint trick to your advantage. A good way to store it is in an old coffee can – it needs to stay nice and dry for this effect to work (this was among the biggest mistakes of the cavemen). You can bring it along on camping trips or keep some in your car for emergencies. During a zombie apocalypse, it would be smart to escape the freeway on foot ONLY with some type of improvised flaming device to ward off the undead until you find better cover. Tip within a tip: the more you twist it, the slower it will burn .

CLAY - If you’re a down and out sculptor in the Paseo district or you had a close encounter of the third kind but then ran out of mashed ‘taters, don’t worry! You can always make some homemade lint clay to work on your next masterpiece. All you will need (besides a cool Hipster name) is: 2 Cups of lint (firmly packed) 1/3 Cup warm water 6 tablespoons of white glue 1 Tablespoon of clear dishwashing liquid The rest is really simple: you mix and mush all this stuff together until you get a uniform consistency. I’m sure you’ll make Andy Warhol proud.

ART - Bizarre as it may seem, people have also been using lint as a direct art medium. By selecting different colors and textures, you can have a full palette of fuzz to work with. These ‘paintings’ are really more like a hybrid of paintings, and sculptures all in one: Leonardo Di Vinci, anyone

PACKING MATERIAL - This one is for the ecologically-minded conservationist in all of us. Lint is probably the softest dry goods ‘garbage’ that humans produce, so why not put it to good use? If you don’t want the lint to get all over whatever you have packaged, you can put the lint in freezer bags.

You might not think about lint that often, but it’s quite likely that when you do, you think, “ throw it in the trash,” and that could be a real shame. Whether you want to be a better fire starter because you missed that episode on doomsday preppers or you’re just one sculpture away from your Ingrid Bergman the NUN , remember: lint isn’t just laundry dust. It’s magical laundry dust.