What do you do if you need to dispose of something by burning in a fire?

I live in a place where backyard burning is legal, so I’d probably do it there. In fact, I left my last full-time job under pretty frustrating circumstances, and once I recovered from the shock I burned all of my company T-Shirts in the backyard fire-pit in much the way you describe.

However, I also have one of these – a small tabletop charcoal grill. With the proper precautions taken, you could easily burn your photographs, documents, or small mementos, and bury the ashes afterwards.

I have also burned documents in a small Weber barbecue, as with the lid on you can contain flying burny bits.

Sorry if this isn’t helpful at all, but could you use a lighter? If you want it to be ceremonious, maybe take one page at a time and light the corner of the paper and watch it slowly burn up. Drop it into an ashtray or something. Might be kinda dangerous, idk.

Take them to a state park or local recreation area with fire pits or fire grills, and burn them there.

Here in the East Bay you could take them to Lafayette Reservoir or Briones Park or Tilden Park and burn them in a fire grill.

What @zenvelo said.

A metal 5 gallon pail could work as a burn receptacle in a pinch. Where ever you have a fire make sure you have a bucket of water nearby to extinguish the burnt embers to ensure the fire is out.

I completely understand this impulse to ceremonially get rid of something by fire.

A good many years ago I decided to burn all my journals and letters, and travel light. I used a flowerpot and went to a nearby beach. It does take a while though if you feed it a few pages at a time; so eventually I gave up on the flowerpot. But technically it works. You just have to keep poking to ensure it has enough air.

Of course, it depends on how big this something is. I have a 5-gallon steel bucket that I have punched air holes in around the bottom facing outwards. This works very well if you have something small, or have papers you want/need to burn/destroy.

@zenvelo has a good idea!

I used to have an old bath in the paddock out the back, and we used that on occasions. You could also get some sort of metal instrument and use that. Use something you can throw away. I’m thinking a big, metal pan/pot. Shred the letters as much as you can before you burn them.

We do have fire regulations here and at times fires are prohibited. i know in your state you have bad bush fires, so you’d want to be sure there wasn’t a ban on setting a fire.

BBQ pit or hibachi, done deal.

We have a burn pile and burn stuff all the time, so I’m not really a player here.

For your circumstance, @Jeruba, my first thought was the same as @zenvelo – park with a pit. If you have a lot to burn, starting a fire in a burn pit on a beach would be really romantic.

If you have no access to fire, you know something else that would be cool? Paper mache. Something funky or functional that hides your secrets forever.

Cleaning out a bunch of Mom and Dad’s stuff I came across box after box of bank statements and cancelled checks. We also live in an area were open burning is prohibited. BUT the loophole is if it is a cooking fire, it is ok! I went to the junkyard and got a 55 gallon drum and punched holes around the bottom and lit a bag of charcoal and wood in the bottom to get it nice and hot. Then over the course of a couple days burned a mess of documents. I set the barrel up on some blocks to keep the heat off the driveway and help the draft, and kept a grill and hot dogs nearby in case the cops came by. They never did.

I burn papers in my wood burning stove. It is a high efficiency Lopi Freedom. 20 pounds of paper has the same heating value as one gallon of heating oil – about $3.00. I have disposed of a lot of paper for friends and relatives. I’d gladly do yours.

Do you have any friends with wood burners? You can help heat their home and send the papers to heaven while enjoying a nice Pinot.

The outdoor barbecues suggested above may be your best bet, if you don’t have the facilities at home. Be sure to check whether there are any local fire bans before proceeding, and try to shred (in a shredder) or crumple the paper first. Don’t place a stack of paper on a fire pit – the flames will just die out.

I use a Ragu (Garlic Cheese) spaghetti jar made of glass on my porch to burn bank statements and Comcast bills. One of these is burned to protect my finances and the other one is ceremonial (and hurts my finances).

As long as you aren’t burning a tone of shit small controlled fires should be fine. Ten envelopes go up in 60 seconds.

I have a fire pit so I use that.

One of my former acquaintances was dumped by her boyfriend (because she was crazy, but I didn’t find that out until a few years down the line). She invited a bunch of her friends over to her house one evening for a BBQ. Then she took all of the boyfriend’s stuff that he had not yet removed from her place, threw it on the grill, doused it with lighter fluid and set it alight.

One of my dumb male friends ended up dating her several years later, knowing all of this. He was treated to his own particular dose of crazy hell when he told her she had to stop talking about Chem Trails.

If you don’t have a grill, you could probably use an old metal coffee can if you burn the items one at a time, so as not to cause too big of a blaze. Just don’t wear a foil hat on your head when you do it.

I use a cross-cut shredder, so perhaps it doesn’t seem so … I don’t know, respectful? ceremonial and sacred? It certainly isn’t as warm or bright. But I also don’t have to watch every spark that flies out of the fire, worry about which of my neighbors might complain – directly or indirectly – about the smoke or open flame (and an indirect complaint via police or firefighters is much less welcome than a direct sharp word) – nor do I have to check to make sure that every incriminating page (I’m borrowing your image here, not mine) is burnt beyond readability. And it’s quick, too.

However, back in the olden days when we used to routinely burn paper and cardboard trash every week, we had a burn barrel for the purpose, with air vents punched into the bottom level and a crude wire grate to enable the trash to burn from the bottom as well as the top. And a long iron rod to stir the contents from time to time as I tended and watched. Funny, but most people in our neighborhood seemed to have something similar “back in the day” and you’ve made me realize that now, no one has that any more.

The Japanese dispose of good luck charms and amulets in a fire called Dondo-yaki
Usually this is done around the New Year.
They watch the smoke rise as if the items are returning to heaven.
There are few better places to be than around a bonfire at midnight on a cold evening eating rice balls and sipping proffered saki.

My woodburner runs at a signifcantly higher temperatures than conventional burn barrels. It takes the exhaust and smoke and mixes them with heated combustion air so they burn a second time. That extracts more heat, leaves less ash, produces virtually no smoke and reduces heating bills at the rate of 15 cents per pound. Think of it like Shel Silverstein’s – The Giving Tree. The disposal method is clean, respectful, and the items burned offer you warmth as they change from one form of matter to another. The carbon atoms you release today will live on in other life forms tomorrow.

Anyone besides me have dreams of fire last night?

You can burn ‘em in your washing machine.

I’d go to the beach or the desert—some place where fires could be made safely. It seems sad to burn old papers, but maybe they hold bad memories for you. I was just at a ceremony where we were invited to write things that we wanted to let out of our lives on pieces of paper and then throw them in the bonfire. Then we cooked marshmallows on sticks and made s’mores.

That was with a lot of people who also had a lot of things they needed to let go of. If you were alone, that would be different. If you were a musician, you might play a different tune for each letter you put in the fire. I would meditate on what I was trying to let go of, and send it out into the ether, I guess.

Then, I’d never burn old letters or documents. I am in the process of scanning all my old records and letters and so on, and then I’m shredding them and recycling the shredded paper. Perhaps instead of burning them, you could shred them. There’s something satisfying about putting paper in a shredder and hearing that satisfying noise of the paper being torn to bits by a machine going chunka chunka chunka chunka chunk!

@Plonk A friend of mine shreds his papers and gives me the scraps to use as fire starter in my wood burning stove.
I push a few handfuls into the stove, put smaller pieces of wood right on top, pour some used cooking oil over the pile, and then add a layer of heavy wood.
One match and the stove burning beautifully in 6 minutes. In 10 minutes I can turn on the afterburner. I effectively convert 20 pounds of paper is one gallon of heating oil worth about $2.50. (Or in Metric: 2 kg of paper is equivalent to about 1 liter of heating oil worth about $0.70.)
Now that’s recycling! And a respectful way to send papers and thoughts into the ether.

On an average winter day with temps near freezing. I will burn about 80–90 pounds (40 kg) of wood. A few pounds of added paper scraps are nothing.