We are all accustomed to starting a fire at home, or in the woods where we have all the advantages. Lighter, fire starters and seasoned wood all make the process fairly painless. But in reality fire almost never starts this easily.

Worse yet, if you have watched others make and keep fires going, but never done it yourself, it is not as easy as others make it look.

There are a couple of things you can do to 'cheat' and make fire starting easier, but remember: you probably won't have most of these things if you are stuck in the woods in an emergency.

For example, whenever I have my kids start a fire, they immediately go down to the dryer and grab lint from the cleanout tray.

This does work amazing, however if you depend on lint to start a fire in the wild, you will run into problems once the lint runs out. Much better to include an altoids or shoe polish can in you emergency pack. You can keep any type of dried tinder you want in it, and when you run out you can always make more.