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.

Tom Cruise: There's nothing like a good old-fashioned fridge sniffing session. Now smelling one after the power has been out a couple/three days, I can understand, but when it's new?

As legend has it, Tom was was spotted while out shopping for a new refrigerator when he was seen taking getting up close and personal with the appliance and just had to know what it smelled like.

According to an eyewitness: “Tom came back in today, but seemed a little distanced. When we asked him if he needed any help, he ignored us and wandered away.”

“A moment later, he started sniffling appliances. It was pretty bizarre, when we asked him what he was doing he replied, “Just shopping…” He ended up buying the Refrigerator, so it’s all good.”

However, further investigation reveals that this photo is, sadly, a fake. We’re as disappointed as you are. I know I would prefer to live in a world in which Tom Cruise sniffs appliances, but alas, it was just a gimmicky marketing ploy by an appliance dealer.

Oh well. Hopefully next week will dredge up something equally ludicrous, like Miley Cyrus using a toaster as a tongue stretcher, or Johnny Depp using a dryer to de-thaw a turkey. We can dream.

Why it is generally better to repair your appliances than it is to buy new.

We really do put our money where our mouth is!

We’ve become a throwaway society: something isn’t working right and our first instinct is to replace it altogether.

But, there are a lot of kitchen and laundry appliances that could be repaired just as easily — and for a lot less money. At All Pro Appliance, we emphasize repair over purchase with our customers.

We push repairs because that is what we honestly believe in, and by allowing our beliefs to become our business model, our customers know that they can trust us to do what we think is right, not just most profitable.

Perhaps you, too, will be “aficionados for repair” once you read more about why we feel so strongly about it.

• Repairs cost less than new purchases, while adding years of use. Spending a few hundred dollars always beats spending additional hundreds, if not thousands. And if that lower expense also extends the life of your equipment for additional years (which is the whole point of doing it), then all the better, right?
• Older equipment is usually better-made equipment. This might not be true for maximum energy efficiency, in some cases. But the trade-off in a slightly lower efficiency can be more than offset by the quality of a system’s parts. Yesterday’s machines were made with quality metals; today’s are often made with cheaper metal composites and plastics. So a new machine is far more prone to breakdowns…and paying for that over and over is certainly not an efficient use of your time or money.
• Newer equipment often uses complicated computer technologies. That is why today’s appliances can often overheat and experience other unexpected problems. (For example, did you know that simply by opening your washer’s door or adjusting its knobs while it’s operating could cause two motors to burn out?) So replacing “ol’ reliable” before it’s absolutely necessary can introduce a costly “ol’ unreliable” into your home. And repairing electronic equipment will always cost you more money than it would to fix simpler mechanical equipment.
• Electronic control boards are always at risk. Most consumers don’t realize that today’s more complicated electrical systems are at risk for costly damage even when they are not being used. A power surge or brown-out can attack a modern appliance’s computer motherboard(s), shorting out or eliminating it's ability to operate without expensive replacement.
• Repairing supports the United States of America in more ways than one. Over the past decade or so, more appliance-related jobs have been outsourced overseas. Thousands of American workers have been laid off and once-vital neighborhood factories have shut down. So (1) buying new equipment actually rewards corporations for this behavior. (2) A lot of earlier, high-quality parts are still inventoried by a vital network of U.S. distributors, many “Mom & Pop” businesses, so ordering these inventoried parts can help Americans keep their homes and raise their children. And (3) repairing is a form of recycling, keeping more appliances in our homes and fewer in our landfills and scrap yards.

Yes, we could probably make more money urging new appliances at the first sign of trouble. But for all the reasons stated above, we remain confident that repair is always the better course of action whenever possible.

Let’s put it this way: When we tell you it is time to buy a new machine, you can be certain that we are telling you the truth.

Should you need a new appliance, All Pro Appliance can give you a referral for a new one at an affordable price, because we have aligned ourselves with some of Oklahoma's leading appliance distributors.