The burn cage, my hate/love relationship

My husband bought a burn cage last week. I looked at him like he had 3 heads! Seriously, I thought it was the dumbest thing he could have done. What in the world did we need that for? I mean, we already have a firepit why get a stainless steel cage to burn garbage in? Seems like overkill to me.

So, he tries to explain it to me....and the explanation includes "don't put plastic in it" What the heck? That's the best part of burning! Plastic makes all the paper burn faster, right? Well, ok...I do know you're not supposed to burn plastic. You can try to explain that to me till you are blue in the face and I will still think 3 seconds of burning a plastic water bottle is better than 1000 years in a landfill!


If we had a decent recycling program out here, it would be different. Unfortunately we don't. I came up with the system that light plastics get burned, laundry bottles get saved as sharps containers and really heavy stuff goes in the garbage.

We do have a paper recycling program of sorts. You know those paper retriever bins? We have those at the high school. But you can only put clean paper or cardboard in those. I end up burning a lot of used napkins, paper feed sacks, pasta boxes etc.

The burn cage

I much prefer burning garbage then a bonfire. Weird right? Burning wood just for fun seems like a waste to me. It's a nice 'camp style' experience and all, but I need that wood for winter heat! Sure I burn fallen branches all the time, but not chopped wood. 

Anyway, I walked around the burn cage for about a week without going near it. Then the day came....the inevitable....the garbage can was full of boxes, paper plates & paper towels and I needed to do something about it! 

I slowly drag the garbage can out to the fire pit. There it sits in the sun. It looks like nothing more than 4 metal screens hooked together and a bunch of money wasted. Hmmm.

There's no sending the burn cage back, he's already used it. I have no choice. Into the cage the garbage goes. I grab a napkin out of the pile and light it with my lighter. All I had to do was drop it in. Once. No relighting. No mixing. No making sure it's lit on all sides. I put the lid on and walked away.

Check out what Allstate says about location and coverage for fire pits.

It actually worked! This might not be so bad after all. No half burned papers blowing across the yard. The ashes stayed hot in there for hours! I must have dropped 'just one more thing' in there 20 times...and every time it was gone when I came back.

I've realized that the nice thing about it is that I can throw small amounts in there, light it and walk away. If it goes out, then it goes out. It'll burn next time I throw something in. No more waiting till the can is full to burn. I can do it even on windy days.

Half burned items eventually do burn completely and don't end up all over my yard in the meantime. Nothing is digging through my fire pit for half burned paper plates anymore. That's a huge bonus here in the woods!

Check out what HGTV says about fire pit safety.

The only downsides are that we will have to take it out for bonfires and let's face it....it's ugly! It does look a world better than a traditional burn barrel though, so there is that! 

Supposedly it does come apart for removal and storage. Obviously I've never tried, but I can see how it's possible. It has rods that run down the corners and thread through the loops on the screens. This burn cage apparently has great reviews which is why he chose this particular model. 

I can believe it has great reviews because it really is a quality product.

I guess you can say I've come around to his way of thinking on this one. Don't tell him that though. There's no telling how he'd use that information!

~L

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