To think you don't throw away birthday cake candles?

[catsonthebed]

Was at my SILs at the weekend celebrating a birthday. When I went to help clear up, I saw that all the candles from the birthday cake were in the bin. When I rescued them, thinking they'd been thrown away accidentally, she said she always bins them. Apparently they're 'gross' after they've been in a cake and 'who on earth cba to wash things like that?'.

Is this really a thing? I've had the same candles for years, still use some of the holders from my childhood. They get lit for a few seconds and then blown out, a handful of times every year.

YABU: Eurgh, reusing candles, that's so gross, I've got a whole life to live and it holds no time for rinsing tiny plastic candle holders, you loser

YANBU: Obviously you reuse the things, this is just another example of a profligate and wasteful world gone MAD

I throw away not due to the frankly overdramatic YABU comment but because I don't want that level of clutter laying around. While the kids were young we had a small tubberware with left over candles but not burned ones.

I always throw them, but I’m a big fan of throwing things.

I might reuse chunky number ones - but not always as it felt unfair that the younger child always had ‘used’ candles. I need things to match (!) and so while I used to keep used ones, I never really reused them so eventually chucked them all and only use once now.

I keep them, because throwing them away would be profligate and wasteful in a world gone MAD. But every single birthday I want to use fresh new candles on the cake because they look nicer, so I have a tub of approx 273 used birthday cake candles.

@Ilovemyfam

'Maybe we used saved ones when celebrating the cat’s birthday because she would not notice that we are being cheapskates.'

Do you use 'human' years or the American Veterinary Medical Associations suggestion when calculating the number of candles for your cat's birthday cake?
1 cat year: 15 human years
2 cat years: 24 human years
3 cat years: 28 human years
4 cat years: 32 human years
5 cat years: 36 human years
6 cat years: 40 human years
7 cat years: 44 human years
Each extra year adds about 4 human years.

(Please post a video of your cat blowing out the candles.) 🎂

Terrible hybrid here of keeping them in the drawer all year and then buying new ones anyway 😂

I have a little tupperware box in my baking tin for candles and holders. Totally agree with you. They're tiny, it's not like they clutter the place up, and it takes seconds to wash them.

Snap

why are they gross?
dont you use candle holders+?
surely the candles themselves dont just sit in the cake?

anyway, of course we save candles

I would throw them away because it looks a bit shit to have someone else’s used candles on your birthday cake.

It seems unnecessarily parsimonious to reuse them. And a bit miserable to have already used candles on a cake. Exactly the sort of thing my spendthrift mother would’ve done.

We re-use the same ones until they get low. You can wash the holders.

I wouldn’t want the extra mental load of having to remember to buy candles every time there’s a birthday

I feel seen!

I have a tub of half-used, well-rinsed candles! Yanbu

YABU. I can’t believe you reuse them, that honestly is grim.

We get new birthday candles for every birthday, just like we always get new banners and other decorations.

My MIL is like you and it drives me up the wall. She always wants to save everything and can’t bear to throw stuff away 🙄

I reuse. My children don't mind if mixmatch of candles types or wrong number

I have those little flower holders from when I was a child I also have some little glass animal ones from when my mum was little so must be 80 odd years old, we occasionally use them.

the candles, I have a little box on each of the children’s keep sake boxes which have all their birthdays cake candles in. They’re adult now but on the odd occasion I see them when they have candles I scoop them up.

when my eldest was little I got this idea that it might be unlucky to bin them, after all they had made a wish on them, so I started to keep them.

my DIL thought this was so sweet an idea, she’s taken it a step further, she keeps the candles until the following year, then the night before the birthday they relight them, and burn them completely because either wish had come true, or could be remade the next day.

I reuse ours. Have had the same ones for a few years now....not one person has ever commented / noticed they aren't new candles.

I’m another re-user. When the children were younger I used to buy new ones for them, but used old ones for my husband and me.

Now that they are adults we all have old ones!

What's grim about it?

Don't you have water and soap in your house?

Why would you get a new banner each time? Can't you fold?

What is miserable about using a candle that has had 5 minutes use?

We reuse all the time and nobody notices or cares.

This is EXACTLY something I would stress about @grumpynan
when my eldest was little I got this idea that it might be unlucky to bin them, after all they had made a wish on them, so I started to keep them.

I always keep and reuse - never occurred to me to throw away, who cares if the candles aren't the exact same length (I dont keep the shorter ones)

We have a plastic box full.of used candles. They get reused as needed. DS was 18, we still had a 1 and 8 from those ages, and some little champagne bottle candles. All on the 18th cake.
They are lit before anyone sees them, so no biggie

I am all for reduce, reuse, recycle but surely the is a limit to everything... Saving candles and then buying new ones anyway is a pointless clutter collecting. Having a tub full of hundreds of used candles is another thing to manage in a house which I am just not prepared to do. What does one do with numbered candles if you only have one child? Even if you have multiple, would the younger one always get second-hand candles?

Well now I’m shocked that so many people buy new every time 🤣

I don’t just hold onto things for the sake of it, lots of things get binned but candles will absolutely be used again. Several times a year every year.

It isn’t like other stuff that you might use ‘one day’.