Check out the aluminum foil hacks you can’t ignore. They’re guaranteed to make your life easier!
Aluminum foil is an essential item in every kitchen. But if you’re only using this cooking staple for the basic purpose of wrapping your baking sheets, you’re missing out on a huge range of handy aluminum foil applications. Much like duct tape, aluminum foil has a nearly endless assortment of purposes that can make your life just a bit easier. From cleaning to crafts, take a look below at the best aluminum foil tricks you shouldn’t ignore anymore.
1. Clean Your Grill
While you can wrap your food in aluminum foil before you place it on the grill to keep your barbecue clean, that process is sometimes difficult when you’re cooking for a large group of people. If you do place food on your grill directly, you can still clean it all off with ease using aluminum foil.
Right after you’re done cooking, lay a sheet of aluminum foil over the hot grill. Next time you’re ready to use your barbecue, or after it’s completely cooled off, simply crumple up the aluminum foil and throw it away. It should scrape off any lingering foodstuffs and leave your grill ready for the next big barbecue.
2. Iron Faster
When you’re ironing your clothes, you usually have to go over the same area multiple times before you finally achieve that wrinkle-free look. Much of the heat you’re using is sucked up by the actual ironing board, forcing you to run the iron over the same spot, again and again, to generate enough heat to get the job done.
Aluminum foil can solve that problem. Simply place a sheet of aluminum foil on your ironing board and slip your cover over it. The foil will reflect the heat rather than absorb it, allowing you to iron your clothes to wrinkle-free perfection much more quickly.
3. Keep Your Bananas Fresh
Bananas are such a yummy, easy-to-eat snack. Unfortunately, they also go bad really quickly. After a few days of lying out on your kitchen counter, your bananas will start to brown. Once that happens, no one will want to eat them. If you need to keep your bananas fresher longer, turn to aluminum foil.
Wrap a small piece of aluminum foil around the stem of your bananas. By breaking off part of the banana’s contact with the air, you can slow the decaying process that plagues these fruits. A little piece of aluminum foil can lead to longer days of ripe, yellow, ready-to-eat fruit.
4. Keep Insects Away
Household insects like to hide in dark, creepy places. If you search long enough in your kitchen cabinets, you’ll probably find a few unwelcome visitors. While using shelf liners is a common practice to keep your cabinets clean, aluminum foil is the best shelf liner of all.
Aluminum foil reflects light, which in turn drives away all the creepy-crawly creatures. By lining your cabinets with aluminum foil, you’re creating an environment where no insect wants to live. You’ll keep your kitchen safe from scavenging critters and you’ll keep your cabinets tidy and dust-free.
5- Protect Your Plants
Vegetable gardens are a great way to explore a new hobby and hone your green thumb. But even the most experienced gardeners struggle to keep the insects away from their beloved plants. You can’t partake in the fruits (or vegetables) of your labor if the outdoor critters have gotten to them first.
When putting together your garden, mix strips of aluminum foil with your mulch. The foil will keep the insects away while simultaneously directing more light to your plants. Prepare some space in your fridge to accommodate your thriving vegetable garden if you use this trick!
6. Shield Your Doorknobs
If you’re into DIY projects in your home, you may find that you want to paint a few doors to add a splash of color to your space. But while you’re painting your door, you’re faced with the issue of protecting the doorknob from your new color. Painting tape is an okay solution, but it’s also time-consuming and difficult to wrap each strip around your circular doorknob.
Instead of wasting your precious time on that strategy, simply wrap a piece of aluminum foil tightly around the door handle. Then, use a knife to cut a perfect circle around the handle, ensuring that you get clean lines when you remove the foil. Once you’re done painting, you simply have to take the foil off to finish your project—it’s that easy.
7. Extend Your Battery’s Lifespan
Dead batteries are one of life’s many inconveniences. While you can’t ensure that your batteries will last forever, you can extend their lifespan with a little aluminum foil. Put a small ball of aluminum foil at either end of your battery each time you put it in your device.
The aluminum foil will extend the lifespan, ensuring that you get all the juice you can from each little cell. The days of sighing in frustration when your TV remote dies won’t disappear completely, but they will be few and far between.
8. Clean Your Iron
After years of regular use, you might notice that your iron has started to build up a healthy supply of dirt and rust. Once that happens, you can no longer iron your clothes with confidence, as the dirty device will leave marks all over your clean fabrics. Thankfully, aluminum foil provides an easy solution to clean your iron.
Simply crunch the aluminum foil into a ball and scrub the bottom of your hot iron. While the process might leave a few scratches, it will also remove all the build-up that has the potential to ruin your clothes. What are a few scratches in comparison to a clean, usable iron?
9. Soften Brown Sugar
Most people don’t use brown sugar every day. This kitchen staple is more of a once-in-a-while necessity, rather than a daily need. After some time without use, however, your brown sugar can harden, making it difficult to remove any usable sweetener from the packet. If that happens, aluminum foil can help.
Wrap your hardened brown sugar in a small piece of aluminum foil and bake it in the oven for around five minutes. When you remove it, the sugar will be back to its soft state and you can proceed to use it as you normally would.
10. Move Your Furniture
When the furniture in your house is in one arrangement for a long time, you might find that you’re desperate for a change. Unfortunately, shifting your furniture often results in scratches along your floor. Is changing up your space worth the risk?
Well, it is with aluminum foil. Before you drag your furnishings across your house, put a small layer of foil underneath the legs of each piece. The foil will slide easily along the ground, protecting your floor from scratches and allowing you to rearrange your space with ease.
11. Polish Your Silver
If you have any silver in your house, you might notice that it loses its gleam after too many uses. Did you know aluminum foil solves that problem? Line a pan with aluminum foil, fill it up with cold water, and add a bit of salt. Then, put your silverware into the pan and let it sit for a few minutes.
When time is up, wash off the silverware and see it restored to its former glory. The aluminum paired with the salt and silver leads to a molecular exchange that polishes your silver pieces. But you don’t have to know the full science to put this trick into practice.
12. Boost Your WiFi
While you may not be ready to invest in your own tin foil hat, a little tin foil around your wireless router can work wonders. If you find that your connection is weak, slow, and generally unreliable, aluminum foil might provide a solution.
Start by taking a simple piece of cardboard and covering it with aluminum foil. Then, put the flap around your router, ideally in the back where the cords plugin. The aluminum should provide a boost to your WiFi signal that will make your Internet more reliable. Connectivity problems are gone!
13. Scrub Your Pots
Just like aluminum foil can remove built-up grime from your iron, it can also clean your pots and pans. If you have kitchenware that’s full of junk you can’t manage to get off, aluminum foil might provide a solution.
Ball up a bit of aluminum foil and use it to scrub away at the muck inside your pans. It should remove the built-up crud fairly easily, leaving you with shining pans that look almost as good as new. Don’t settle for dirty kitchenware when cleaning with aluminum foil is so easy.
14. Clean Your Glue Gun
If you like crafting, you’ve probably used a hot glue gun on one more than once occasion. It’s truly the most incredible adhesive. The hot glue that drips from the top can bond almost anything together, with little chance that the two properties will separate. Unfortunately, hot glue guns are also pretty messy.
After a few uses, a layer of tried glue builds up over the tip. Not only does it make the gun less effective, but it’s also a nightmare to get off. That is unless you use aluminum foil. When the gun has cooled down, ball up a bit of aluminum foil around the tip and scrub it clean. It will easily remove any excess adhesive, leaving your gun clean and ready for the next use.
15. Improve Your Radiator
If you have a standard radiator that attaches to your wall, you may find that it’s not the most effective way to heat your house. A chunk of the heat is absorbed by the wall behind the radiator, which means much less warmth is actually circulating through your home. Aluminum foil can solve that problem.
Find a piece of cardboard almost as big as your radiator and wrap it in aluminum foil. Place the cardboard behind your radiator and feel the difference as heat pours into your home. The aluminum foil will reflect the heat rather than absorb it, ensuring that most of that warmth stays trapped inside, rather than escaping through the walls.
16. Preserve Your Snacks
Unless you buy a resealable bag, opening a packet of snacks is a dangerous decision. You run the risk that you won’t finish everything in the bag, but without a seal, the snacks might become stale and inedible. If you don’t want to overeat, but you still want to preserve your food, aluminum foil is the answer.
Once you’ve eaten what you want out of the packet, take a strip of aluminum foil and hold it over the opening. Then, heat the aluminum slightly with an iron to create a DIY seal. The heated foil will keep air out of the package, ensuring that everything inside stays fresh until you’re ready to nibble again.
17. Clean Your Jewelry
Aluminum foil cleans much more than silverware. While the handy kitchen staple polishes your tarnished pieces, it also refreshes your favorite jewelry. Cleaning your jewelry involves a similar process to cleaning your silverware, with a few key changes.
This time, line a bowl with aluminum foil and fill it with hot water. Then, add a bit of bleach-free, non-liquid laundry detergent. Put your jewelry in the bowl and let it soak for just a couple of minutes. Once that’s done, you can rinse your trinkets off and lay them on a towel to dry. The molecular reaction should make your pieces noticeably cleaner.
18. Create a Sun Box
Plants are perfect for adding a bit of life and color to the inside of your home. If you choose greenery that loves the sun, however, you have to place those plants near a window where they can consistently soak up the warm rays. Unfortunately, the sun always comes from one direction, and eventually, the plants will start to lean towards the light.
If you want to feed your plants light from all directions, create a little sun box with aluminum foil. Remove the top and one side from a cardboard box and line the rest of the box with aluminum foil. Place all your sun-hungry plants inside and set the box near a window. This little trick will give your shrubs so much light that they may not know what to do with it.
19. Sharpen Your Scissors
Just like your kitchen knives, your favorite pair of scissors will start to go dull with continued use. While they’re used to cut through anything with ease, getting them to work correctly is now a struggle. But have no fear—aluminum foil presents a solution.
Take a few strips of aluminum foil and cut it with your scissors as many times as you can. After a few snips, you’ll start to notice that the edges of your scissors are sharpening once again. It’s the perfect way to restore your scissors without having to use any special tools that complicate the process.
20. Make Your Own Stylus
For larger mobile tablets and even normal smartphones, styluses are now the must-have accessory. They’re on sale for quite a large chunk of change, but they open up new possibilities in using your device. If you don’t want to spend the cash, however, you can create your own stylus using a bit of aluminum foil.
Just take a regular pen or pencil and attach a bit of foil to the tip. The foil will allow the pencil to work with your device, creating an at-home stylus that works for every budget. Why fork over a wad of cash at the store when you can make your own stylus at home?
21. Maintain Your Fireplace
While aluminum foil can fix many problems after they happen, it can also prevent problems before they occur. If you have a real wood-burning fireplace in your home, then you know how dirty it can get when the ashes settle. The aluminum foil keeps you from constantly picking up charred wood from the floor of your fireplace.
Create a double layer of aluminum foil that’s about as big as the wood grate in your fireplace. Slide it underneath the grate and allow it to sit there while your fire is burning. When the fireplace cools off completely, probably a full 12 hours later, you can simply wrap up the foil and throw it away. It’s the perfect no-hassle clean-up.
22. Fish Smarter
Taking up fishing as a hobby requires a lot of patience. Still, it’s a little frustrating when you spend hours on the water, only to come home empty-handed. Interestingly enough, aluminum foil might provide a solution.
It’s been proven that fish are attracted to light. While your bait is a tasty snack, a bit of reflected light might draw in more interested swimmers than a simple worm. Next time you head out on the water, attach a bit of aluminum foil to your hook. The foil will reflect the light in the water, naturally attracting fish to your rod. It sounds crazy, but it just might give you the catch you’ve been waiting for.
23. Reducing Joints Pain
Joint pain can be downright unpleasant and, above all, painful. Of course, there are different ways to relieve them, with medication, among other things, but once again, aluminum foil could help. In fact, wrapping your toes-or any part of your body that suffers from joint pain-will go a long way towards relieving the pain.
This technique is believed to have been used for a hundred years. Apparently, human organisms contain special stem cells that constantly interact with the Earth’s energy field. Aluminum foil helps to reflect this energy field, and thus, to restore the possible disrupted interaction that could occur in the stem cells and cause pain.
24. Baking a Perfect Pie Crust
Do you like to bake all kinds of pies, but always end up with pies that have a burnt crust on the edges? Aluminum foil will solve your problem!
Before putting your pie in the oven, take a sheet of aluminum foil and cover the entire circumference of your pie crust. The foil will prevent the edge of the crust from burning while the rest of your pie is golden brown.
25. Keeping Your Bread Warm
Do you have a homemade bread or cake you’d like to bring to your dinner tonight? To impress your family or friends even more by offering them something fresh and still warm, count on the aluminum foil.
As long as your bread or cake comes out of the oven and is still warm, wrap it in a piece of napkin and cover it with aluminum foil. Aluminum foil has the property of reflecting heat, so it will keep your bread or cake warm for a long time.
26. Protecting Your Child’s Mattress
A newborn does not pose too much of a problem in terms of nocturnal damage since it is wearing a diaper. However, when a child reaches the age where he or she is trying to get clean, it can become more of a problem. Fortunately, aluminum foil can save parents a lot of trouble!
If you don’t have a plastic mattress cover, cover your child’s mattress with several sheets of aluminum foil and place a large beach towel on top. Then, simply tie the whole thing up with the fitted sheet so that nothing moves while your child sleeps. If a leak occurs during the night, the mattress will be spared.
27. Storing Your Celery
Many people keep their celery in the refrigerator in the plastic bag in which they bought it, or directly in the fridge, without packaging. However, if stored this way, celery will quickly become dry and inedible.
The best way to store celery is to keep the celery heads whole, then wrap it tightly in aluminum foil before putting it in the refrigerator. This trick allows you not to lose the moisture from your celery, which will leave it fresh and crispy for 2 to 4 weeks.
