Boot The Plastic Wrap & Make DIY Waxed Fabric Instead!

***To hear me talk a little more about this, you can listen to my Cooke's Frontier Podcast, where I discuss how this process went for me, along with a reader question, 90-Day Emergency Food & Water Update and more!***

Plastic wrap may cause chemicals to come into contact with out food and leach through into those foods. Since manufacturers aren't required to list the chemical make up of those plastic wraps, we just don't know what they are mad eof or what chemicals we may be exposing our bodies to.
To be safe, I firmly advocate removing plastics from your kitchen if possible. We have moved on to glass containers to replace the rubbermaid or tupperware kinds, and we use small paper sacks for little things like chips or small snacks. But the biggest issue I still face is how to wrap things like, well, wraps and sandwiches?

I was looking through a 1896 cookbook that I have, and in the back it gave directions for re-waxing fabric to use in lunch pails and picnic baskets. This made me think....maybe that would be a possible solution for my sandwich baggies. Since I just happen to have a lot of fabric and beeswax, I decided to give it a try. The cookbook instructs the lady of the house to heat beeswax over low heat and to brush the beeswax on the fabric. I didn't want to melt a bunch of beeswax down, so I thought putting the fabric/wax in the oven would be a good option. Turns out I was right :)

It could not be simpler. Just cut your fabric to your desired dimensions and lay it on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet. Spread some beeswax, either grated or the little bees wax buttons, and pop it into a 170 degree oven.

Let the beeswax melt into the fabric and take it out of the oven. Using a cheap paintbrush, smooth the beeswax over the fabric, covering the spots that got missed during the melting process. Add more beeswax to certain areas if required and repeat the steps until your fabric is coated with a very thin layer of wax.

You can see from here how saturated the fabric looks. 

Close up of before the wax was spread

Close up of after the was was spread.

Take it out of the oven and let it cool.

At this point, you could get very crafty and form up come pouches with button closures for things like sandwiches, or you could go the more relaxed, laid back route that I took and just use the fabric like waxed paper to fold around sandwiches and other items instead.

This process makes the fabric waterproof and it can be cleaned by gently wiping off with a damp rag and mild soap. If, over time, your fabric seems to lose a bit of it's wax, you can simple re-wax the fabric over and over again.

I thought of so many other items I could do this with to make water proof, like hats, the bottom of picnic blankets, boots and more! Once you know the basic process, what you water proof and wax can be pretty much an endless possibility :)

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