If you have an open fire, how do you get rid of the ash?

[BloooCowWonders]

Or rather, into what?! Keep reading about a metal bucket with a lid, but £24 from Wiggly Wigglers seems a lot when we only have a fire at the weekend.
Any ideas please?

I think a metal bucket with a lid is probably worth it. DH vaguely wafts it into a plastic bag which then gets carried through the house leaking ash as it goes. This is cheap, but not particularly effective.

Do you have a catcher kind of thing underneath the grate? Not sure what the actual name of this is, sorry. I then empty this into a bag - minimal dust- and then in bin outside.

I saw an ash vacuum cleaner in Clas Ohlson yesterday, it looked like a bucket with a hose coming out, about £30 I think. We have a wood burnier with ash tray so didn't need it but I thought it looked handy.

www.clasohlson.co.uk/Product/Product.aspx?id=161937604

We have solid fuel heating so stove is on 24/7 at the moment. Scrape around every morning so all ash falls into tray underneath. Hot ash from the tray into metal bucket (doesn't have a lid, just a cheapy one from a hardware shop). Metal bucket outside. Next morning when ash has had 24 hours to cool down it gets tipped into the wheely bin before having the next lot of hot ash put in it.

If you only have a fire at the weekend then bypass the metal bucket. Just empty the cold ash the following week before you light the next fire. If you just use wood you can pop the ash into the compost, if you use coal or other fuels then stick it straight in the bin/plastic bag in the bin.

Thanks all, esp Indith! I was wondering about putting it on the garden. What about 'smokeless' fuel logs? Are they OK or need to be binned?

I'll try the hardware store in another part of town. My closest one only does plastic.

The dc are loving collecting pine cones to put on the fire (v close supervision, but it's spectacular!)

We put ours on the compost heap.

Make sure the ash is really cold and then just lay out sheets of newspaper and wrap it all into a small parcel. Compost or bin accordingly.

our ash is coal and wood, so it gets wrapped in newspaper like better's & binned

If it's too much ash for your own garden and you're feeling generous, store it once completely cold and offer it to other gardeners - Freecycle/Freegle, allotment users, friends, school garden...