Tuesday, April 19, 2011

DIY: Outdoor Ashtray

I have a few friends that are smokers; and yes they know it's bad for them, so I’m not going to preach to them about it.  Besides, I don’t really feel like I have that much room to talk since I used to smoke myself.  

But I’ve been running into the problem, that since I do not smoke my friends will excuse themselves to go outside when a craving hits.  Which I thank them for profusely.  

What I do not thank them for are the cigarette butts that were littering my yard.  Yuck!  I quit smoking so I do not want to have to go through my yard individually picking up each and every butt from someone else’s cigarette habit. (That and getting that smell on my hands makes me start craving one, which is never a good thing. Must... have... willpower...)

But, I did find a way to solve my little problem.  I had a cute galvanized bucket that a friend gave me (she’d ordered several of these metal buckets for centerpieces for her wedding, and had some extras).  So I looked online to see what all needed to go into an outdoor ashtray.  For the most part you just fill the bucket within an inch of the top rim with sand and set it in a spot where the smoker’s will notice and use it.  

Some people put a few handfuls of charcoal into the bucket before pouring the sand, it is said to cut down on the smell, but since my bucket is outside I’m really not that worried about it.


To clean it out you can just use a kitty litter scoop or if you have an old deep fryer scoop it works too (I had ordered a few extra deep fryer parts when I kept losing my original scoop, I found it, so now its my cigarette butt scoop).

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