Nothing like the smell of burning plastic in the morning

So things didn't really go as planned this morning.

You'll probably know by now that we get our heat from the woodstove in the cabin. No other heat source, except for this electricity gulping electrical heater, which I don't want to use unless absolutely necessary.

The cold predicted next week will make it absolutely necessary, but that's another story.

Every morning, we shovel out the ash from the day before and dump it in a small waste bin to make room for a new fire. Sometimes though, not all coals have lost their heat from the night before yet.

We usually try to wait that out, but sometimes we don't notice it in time and the coals enter the waste bin. This way, we had a hole burned into the side of it one day, so since then, we take care to not let them touch the sides. That worked out again this morning. No holes in the sides!

Then, I tried pushing it out of the way...

Oops!

Yeah, no holes in the sides. Just a big, gaping hole in the bottom!

The stove is surrounded by a bit of stone, so I put the bin up on that and started shoveling all of the ash (with coals still burning!) onto the stone. I didn't want any accidents with the hardwood floor!

Then, I grabbed this big plate we still had lying around and used it to take out the smelly plastic bin. Once I dropped that outside, I started gathering up the coals and ashes onto the bin to drop them outside. I took them to a large puddle of water in the grass and dumped them into the water, just to make sure nothing would catch on fire.

I then opened up all of our doors to let the aweful plastic smell out and let my boyfriend know what happened. I asked him to check for a metal or steel bin at the shop during his break and I send him links to a few I found online, in case he couldn't find any in the shop.

Now, I'm waiting to make sure every bit of the mess that's left inside is cooled off enough before I clean that up.

What a mess, huh? I'm just glad the only thing left on the floor is a bit of molten plastic. That could have been a lot worse I imagine!

My plan for a while now had been to buy a metal or steel waste bin and today just moved up that time frame... No more plastic bins next to the woodstove!

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