Storing Bananas Longer
Bananas are a great source of fiber and antioxidants that are good for heart health and digestion. However, one of the main issues people face is determining how many bananas they should stock up on before they are overripe or bad.
Source: Parential
Wrapping the stems of your banana bunch with plastic wrap is all you need to do to keep your bananas longer. When you cover the stem, the bananas will ripen much slower, and you’ll have them for a few extra days.
Pest Management in the Garden
Instead of using expensive and dangerous chemicals to control pests in your garden, you can go green using aluminum foils. These foils don’t affect the plants and are therefore 100% safe to use. In addition, you can use aluminum foil to repel pests in various ways.
Source: One Good Thing By Jillee
Tear off a few pieces of aluminum foils and place them in different parts of your garden, with the shiny part up. You can also add little aluminum foil strips in your garden mulch to repel insects. Placing a few balloons around the garden will also scare away insects and other pests.
Perfect Pie Crust
Although many new bakers prepare perfectly cooked pie in the middle, some struggle to get the same results for the crust. Tin foil is all you need to ensure the crust doesn’t turn black or get burned.
Source: One Good Thing By Jillee
When using aluminum foil, there won’t be too much heat to burn the crust, but rather your pie will cook nicely. If you add it as you start baking, you can remove it when you’re halfway through. Alternatively, you can also wait until it becomes clear that the crust is browning fast and decide to add the tin foil then.
Making a Funnel
Sometimes you may want to pour a liquid into a skinny-necked bottle, but you can’t find your kitchen funnel. You shouldn’t waste your time struggling to put something in such a container when you have aluminum foil in your house.
Source: One Good Thing By Jillee
To use aluminum foil as a funnel, roll a small piece into a cone shape. Then, place your new funnel into the bottle you want to fill and pour in your liquid or whatever you want to store. Therefore, you can reuse your aluminum foil by using it in this creative way.
Roll Dough Easily
Most people roll dough while the rolling pin is in direct contact with the dough. However, you can use plastic wrap and get the same results and avoid the greasy dough messes. Place a sheet on top of the surface you’re flattening your dough with.
Source: Parential
Place the dough on this paper, and then add another sheet on top of the dough. Your rolling pin won’t be in direct contact with the dough. So, regardless of the type of flour you use, you’ll spend little time and effort rolling dough.
Cleaning Silver Jewelry
When your silverware or silver jewelry turns dull and tarnished, you don’t need to spend more money on professionals to clean them for you. Instead, aluminum foil and a few other simple steps can help make your silverware shine again.
Source: WikiHow
Get a dish and line it with aluminum foil. Add baking soda, salt, vinegar, and hot water. Put your dull silver jewelry in the solution for 30 seconds. A chemical reaction that will clean your silver pieces will take place.
Use as a Roasting Pan
You don’t have to buy a perfect roasting pan to prepare bacon. Alternatively, you can use tin foil to prepare crispy bacon just as perfectly as you would with a roasting pan. You can create a fan shape by folding the aluminum foils into strips several times. Place your new apparatus on top of your regular cooking sheet.
Source: America's Test Kitchen
Your bacon will be perfectly crisp because the grease will fall into the grooves. Therefore, instead of spending your money on a roasting pan, you can use this method to reuse aluminum foil in your kitchen and save money.
Homemade Piping Bag
When making pretty cupcakes, you don’t need a real piping bag. Although fancy icing pastry bags come with different nozzles for fancy frosting patterns, you can achieve almost similar results with a homemade tin foil piping bag.
Source: One Good Thing By Jillee
A heavy-duty foil is the best for this task. However, if you have regular foil, you’ll just need to wrap enough layers to make the piping bag sturdy. Now, roll the wrapped aluminum foil into a cone, add soft frosting, twist to seal the top, and apply on your baked treats.
Dividing Baking Trays
When you want to bake different things at once, you need to divide your baking trays. You can create separate sections for different food items to cook using aluminum foil. The different food items will cook separately although they’ll still be cooked simultaneously, saving time and energy consumption.
Source: TODAY
Dividing the baking tray will prevent the sauces or juices from the different food items from mixing. This is especially crucial when the two things wouldn’t taste great when mixed. Thus, the flavors of the different items will be retained.
Prolonging Battery Life
Though most of the latest electronic devices don’t use batteries, some gadgets still run on these power sources. As a result, sometimes your remote may just run out of batteries. To make matters worse, you may find that you have much smaller AAA batteries while you need the larger AAs to power your remote.
Source: Pintrest
You can crumple a bit of aluminum foil to fill the space left by the AAAs batteries to enable them to function like AA batteries. Therefore, the foils will enable you to use AAA batteries on devices that only run on AAs.
Removing Rust
Many iron-based household items are exposed to rust, especially when they come into contact with water. For example, when the iron on your faucet oxidizes, you may start to see ugly little spots all over it. Aluminum foil can enable you to bring back the shiny look of your bathroom or kitchen.
Source: Pinterest
Get vinegar, crump up a piece of aluminum foil, and scratch the rusty part of the faucet or other household items. All the rust will be gone within a few minutes. Although the surface may be left with a few scratches, they will look cleaner than when there was rust.
Help Heal Minor Burns
Even when cooking isn’t your favorite activity, higher chances are that you have burned yourself before. For example, sometimes, you may burn yourself when checking your food in the oven. Unfortunately, even the smallest burns can be painful, especially when first aid is not administered on time.
Source: Pintrest
After burning your hand, clean and gauze the burn before wrapping the aluminum foil around the burned area. Let the shiny side face inward, as this will stop the skin from getting inflamed. Allow the foil to remain there for 15 to 20 minutes.
Get Your Silverware Sparkling
For this little known secret, try rolling your aluminum foil up into a ball and placing it in your dishwasher. Specifically, this hack is for cleaning the grime off your utensils, so you’ll want to put your tin foil ball in the cutlery basket within your dishwasher.
@carolina.mccauley/ TikTok
This cleaning trick works due to the chemical reaction that occurs between the aluminum foil and the dishwashing cleaning tablet. For years boiling baking soda with foil has been a way to clean silverware, and since most dish soaps contain baking soda, the hack works in a similar way. It will leave your silverware sparkling clean!
Sharpening Scissors
You don’t have to spend your money sharpening your scissors when you have aluminum foil in your kitchen cupboard. If your scissors get dull, the foils will help you to restore the edges. Take a piece of aluminum foil and fold it several times to create a thick, folded foil strip.
Source: Parential
Use your scissors to cut the folded foil several times. The added aluminum foil layers will sharpen these hand-operating shearing tools multiple times whenever you cut. After cutting the foil several times, the scissors should be noticeably sharper.
Making Custom Shaped Cake Trays
When baking a cake, you may want to achieve a certain shape. While your pans can help you bake your cake in a circular or rectangular shape, you might want something different. You can go for more unique and custom shapes using aluminum foil.
Source: Parential
Try forming an outline of your desired shape with the thick tin foil. Place your tin foil shape in a regular cake pan then pour in your batter. As long as your tin foil border was thick enough, the cake should come out how you want. Shapes such as hearts or stars can work quite well using this method!
Throw Balls of Foil in The Washing Machine
For this trick, you’ll want to crumple up a few sheets of aluminum foil into balls. These tin foil spheres are the perfect replacement for dryer sheets. They can help restore that fluffy, straight out of the dryer feeling to your towels and other laundry.
Source: econet
Using aluminum foil in the dryer has an additional bonus as well. It will help reduce static electricity that builds up in the dryer. When you use tin foil with your next clothing load, you won’t immediately get shocked and have to deal with staticky clothes when unloading.
Boost Your WiFi
Nothing hurts like being unable to enjoy your favorite TV series in HD or 4K because your WiFi signal keeps growing weak. So instead of getting a new router or changing your provider, you should use aluminum foil. Research has shown that you can boost your WiFi signal with the foil method.
Source: Parential
Fold the edges of the aluminum foil several times on each side to make a sturdy sheet and place it behind the router. The aluminum foil will boost wireless signals in your home at no extra cost.
Cleaning Your Iron
After using your iron for a long time without cleaning it, you may notice an accumulation of burnt gunk on the ironing surface. That build-up soap may be difficult to remove with water alone. In addition, you may damage your clothes when you use such a dirty iron without cleaning it first.
Source: Pinned and Repinned
You only need aluminum foil wrap to remove all the dirt from your iron. Therefore, regardless of how many clothes you iron, you can use this method to keep this important home appliance clean and effective.
Cleaning Cast Iron Pans and Grills
Cast iron pans are popular cookware because they’re reliable, durable, and easy to use. However, the only thing that you can do to guarantee that you will be getting the best results when you cook with cast iron pans and grills is by cleaning them properly.
Source: Parential
You can scrunch up a ball of aluminum foil and use it to clean your cast iron pans and grills. You can use the ball to scrub the dirty items. However, this method shouldn’t be used on non-stick frying pans.
Mice Control
Mice can be destructive, especially when they’re not controlled in time. You can tell if you have a mice problem in your home by checking if there are chewing holes. Then, all you need to know is the path the mice are using to get inside your home.
Source: Parential
Place aluminum foil balls on the paths or holes used by these animals. Although mice are known to eat many things, aluminum isn’t one of them. These pests will leave your home because they cannot penetrate aluminum barriers.
Disposing Hot Grease Safely
After cooking fatty meats like bacon and sausages, one of the main concerns is cleaning and disposing of the grease in the frying pot. Although disposing of the grease in the drainage may look like a good idea, it may cause even more problems after solidifying.
Source: Parential
A tin foil piece is all you need to ensure you safely dispose of the grease. First, line a metallic or glass with the foil to create a depression, then drain your grease. Next, fold the foil and throw the waste in your trash bin.
Preventing Freezer Burn on Ice Cream
Ice cream shouldn’t be exposed to the air. Air exposure causes the formation of ice crystals on top, thereby negatively affecting the quality of ice cream.
Source: Parential
If you want to store your half-eaten ice cream to eat later, you should cover the surface with a piece of plastic wrap before putting the lid back on. This will prevent the air from reaching the ice cream, allowing you to enjoy it longer with the same creamy goodness.
Speeding Up The Ironing Process
Ironing sometimes takes a lot of time because some of the heat is absorbed by the ironing board. You can reduce this heat wastage and speed up ironing by placing a few sheets of aluminum foils between the ironing board cover and the clothes you’re ironing.
Source: ladiesvenue.ru
Aluminum foils will reflect the heat to your clothes instead of absorbing it. Consequently, it’ll take you less time to remove wrinkles from your garments. You could also end up saving on your electricity bills.
Wrap Your Car Keys In Aluminum Foil
The lock and unlock buttons on your car key fob offers convenient technology for a keyless experience. However, this same technology can be manipulated by potential car thieves. Essentially, car thieves can boost the signal of your key fob to amplify its range to unlock your car from a farther distance and steal your belongings inside or even the car itself.
Source: recordnet.com
To protect yourself from car thieves, many experts recommend wrapping your car keys in aluminum foil. The presence of metal will help deflect signals and can help prevent theft.
Cleaning Your Hot Glue Gun
Hot glue guns are used in many areas, such as furniture-repairing, as you can adhere small pieces to joints, mounting, and trim. However, cleaning these gluing devices can be hard, whether the glue is still warm and gooey or cooled down and hardened. However, you can use aluminum foil to clean your hot glue gun easily, at no extra cost.
Source: Parential
Plug in your hot glue gun to warm up the glue. Next, crumple up aluminum foil, take a huge chunk, push it over the nozzle as you twist it. The foils will remove all the glue. Watch your fingers and be sure not to burn yourself through the process!
Resealing Plastic Bags
If you have so much foil and plastic wrap in your houses, you shouldn’t view them as unnecessary waste as there are many ways to reuse them. Sometimes you may have to dispose of your plastic bags as you cannot use them the way they are. But, aluminum foil could be the only thing that you need to reuse these bags.
Source: Parential
For instance, you can wrap the open part of the plastic bag in foil and then melt the plastic underneath using an iron. This can enable you to create a strong seal without damaging the plastic bag through melting.
Moving Heavy Furniture
Although a carpet can make your house attractive, moving heavy furniture can cause a lot of damage. Aluminum foil is the only thing that you need to move your bed and other furniture easily and more safely.
BetterBe
Place the foil, the shiny part up, under the legs of the wardrobe or other furniture you want to move. Since this part is slippery, you can now push the heavy furniture without lifting it too much. Besides, you will reduce the chances of damaging your carpet.
Softening Brown Sugar
Brown sugar should be kept in an air-tight container for prolonged use. However, some people are forced to dispose of the sugar after it becomes hard or turns into a solid block. Aluminum foil is all you need to soften your sugar and continue using it.
Taste of Home
Wrap the hard brown sugar with aluminum foil and warm it in an oven at 300F for a few minutes. The sugar will soften and become ready to use to make your favorite recipe.
Preventing Flour Explosions
Electric mixers are important kitchen utensils mainly used in food preparation. However, when used to mix flour, they can cause a lot of mess by puffing up flour all over the kitchen.
Source: Make Bake Celebrate
You only need to wrap a plastic bag between the bowl and the mixer to prevent the flour from spilling. Although this method will save you from getting floured, it will come at no extra cost. Therefore, instead of throwing away plastic bags, consider reusing them to reduce flour wastage and become more resourceful.
DIY Steamer
If you’re a steam food fan, you don’t have to spend extra money on fancy kitchenware for this cooking method. You only need to make a few balls from the aluminum foil to have a steamer.
Source: Parential
Place tin foil balls in a cooking pan with boiling water and put a heat-resistant dish on top of these balls. Put the vegetables or food that you want to steam on this plate and cover the pot to allow the food to cook.
Preparing Poached Eggs
Although preparing poached eggs can be difficult, some plastic wrap can make the process easier and less stressful. First, take a glass or plastic bowl and line it with a piece of plastic paper. Then, apply just enough oil and crack an egg.
Source: Parential
Tie the plastic wrap into small pouches and put them inside the boiling water. Allow them to cook as much as you want and then remove them. Use a knife or other tool to cut the plastic wrap and enjoy your poached eggs.
Keeping Celery Fresh
Many people keep celery in the fridge in the same plastic container they got it in. Some throw it in the crisper sans packaging. In both cases, celery will quickly degrade and become unappetizing.
Source: Pinterest
A better approach is to keep the celery heads intact and wrap them firmly in aluminum foil before placing them in the fridge. This hack holds in all the delicious crispness and water content, which will keep your celery firm and delicious for about a month.
Drive Insects Away
Ants and other bugs like to find dark spots in your house to set up camp. If you search long enough in your kitchen cupboards, you’ll most likely track down a couple of unwanted guests. While utilizing rack liners is a typical practice to keep your cupboards clean, aluminum foil is the best rack liner of all. Aluminum foil mirrors light, which drives away all the creepy insects.
Source: Shared
With aluminum foil, you’re establishing a climate in which no bug wants to live. You’ll protect your kitchen from curious critters, and you’ll keep your cupboards clean and residue-free in the process.
Perfectly Fried Eggs
If you struggle to fry the ideal egg, aluminum foil may be the answer. Before frying your egg, measure out a portion of aluminum foil over the pan you intend to use. Then, line within the pan with the aluminum foil, pushing down to ensure it adjusts to the shape. When that is done, cover the aluminum foil with oil and heat the pan.
Source: healthadviceforall.com
Breaking the eggs into aluminum foil will stop them from sticking to the lower part of the skillet. You’ll be able to effortlessly flip and turn your eggs, guaranteeing they arrive at the right degree of doneness before removing them from the pan. Easy!
Make a Sun Box
Plants are ideal for adding a pop of color and warmth to your home. If you pick plants that cherish the sun, you’ll need to put those plants close to a window where they can reliably absorb the sun’s rays. The only problem is, since they’ll always be getting sun from one direction, their foliage will start to grow in that direction.
Source: Pinterest
To nourish your plants with light from all angles, make a little sun box with aluminum foil. Eliminate the top and one side from a cardboard box, and line the remainder of the box with aluminum foil. Put your plants inside and set the box close to a window.
Make a Pen Stylus
For tablets and smartphones, styluses are the new must-have accessory. They open up all sorts of new ways to use your gadget, and they get rid of the annoyance of having fingerprints all over the screen.
Source: Pinterest
If you don’t want to throw money away on a fancy store-bought stylus, you can make your own with a bit of aluminum foil. Just attach the foil to the tip of a pen or pencil. The aluminum will enable the pencil to work with your gadget. Amazing, right?
Relieve Joint Pain
Joint pain can be excruciating. There are numerous approaches to reducing this painful affliction. If you’re trying to avoid taking pain medication, aluminum foil could help. Indeed, wrapping your toes – or any piece of your body that experiences pain – will go a long way toward alleviating the ache. This method has been in practice for a long time, and many people swear by it.
Source: Life Of Ads
This is one of those fabled cures that some people love while others get no results. As such, you’ll just need to try it for yourself to see if it works. However, the medical literature does confirm that many amputees get relief from phantom limb pain with aluminum foil wraps, so there is some evidence that it could work.
Clean Your Fireplace
While aluminum foil can fix numerous issues after they occur, it can likewise forestall issues before they happen. If you have a wood-consuming fireplace in your home, you know how messy it can get when the ash settles. Aluminum foil can help you keep everything clean and soot-free.
Source: coating.co.uk
Make a two-fold layer of aluminum foil that is about as large as the wood grind in your chimney. Slide it under the mesh and leave it there while your fire is going. When the fireplace has completely cooled down (usually around 12 hours after the fire died out), you can wrap up the foil and discard it.
Preserving Painting Tools
Painting a house isn’t something that you can complete in a day in most cases. Sometimes you have to wait for the paint to dry before applying another layer. During this process, you may end up destroying a lot of your painting tools.
Source: Parential
You can prevent your paintbrushes and other painting tools from becoming crusty and useless by covering them with plastic wrap. However, if it will take you more than 24 hours to proceed with the work, you can use aluminum foil instead.
Stop Paint Skin
After painting your house or fence, you may be left with some paint that you’ll store for future uses. However, when you keep the remaining paint, a “paint skin” may form, thereby leaving clumps in the paint.
Source: Parential
You can use aluminum foil to stop the top layer of the remaining paint from drying. Simply cut a circle of tin foil and place it on top of the paint before sealing the container. Next time you go to use the paint, just remove the foil and your paint should be completely fine.
Safeguard Your Child’s Mattress
There’s a certain age bracket in which kids are out of diapers but not entirely in control of their bladders, especially when they’re asleep. During these prime bedwetting years, aluminum foil can save you from going through mattress after mattress.
Source: ArticlesVally
If you don’t have a plastic mattress cover, you can line your kid’s bedding with a few sheets of aluminum foil and put a huge beach towel on top. Hold everything in place with the fitted sheet so that nothing moves while your kid dozes. If an accident happens during the night, the mattress will be saved.
Enhance Your Radiator
If you have a standard radiator that attaches to your wall, you might find that it’s not the best method to warm your home. Much of the warmth is consumed by the wall behind the radiator, which means significantly less warmth is able to course through your home. Aluminum foil can take care of that issue.
Source: Tips and Tricks
Find a piece of cardboard that’s around the same size as your radiator and wrap it with aluminum foil. Put the cardboard behind your radiator and feel the change as warmth immerses your home. The aluminum foil will mirror the warmth instead of absorbing it, guaranteeing that the majority of that heat gets caught inside instead of being wasted on your wall.
Fishing Fix
Fishing requires a great deal of patience and persistence. Still, it’s disappointing when you go through hours on the water only to return home without a single catch. If you’ve ever been through a day like this, aluminum foil is here to save your next fishing trip! While your bait may be delicious, a bit of mirrored light will attract more fish.
Source: The Outdoor Traditionalist
Next time you go fishing, connect a bit of aluminum foil to your hook. The foil will mirror the light in the water, drawing fish over to your bait and enticing them to take a bite.
Keep Bread Fresh and Warm
Are you one of the many people who took up baking during the pandemic? If so, you probably love impressing your friends by offering them fresh, warm bread. The only problem is, it doesn’t stay warm for long if you don’t package it in just the right way.
Source: Makeshift Mama
When you pull your bread or cake from the oven, cover it immediately with a napkin and then wrap it in aluminum foil. Aluminum foil has the property of reflecting warmth, so it will keep your bread or cake warm for quite a while.
Store Leftover Snacks
Unless they’re in resealable packaging, opening snacks can be a perilous choice. If you don’t consume the whole bag at once, your favorite snacks may become lifeless and unappetizing. If you like to take your time to savor your treats, and save some for another day, aluminum foil is going to be your best friend.
Source: YouTube
As soon as you’ve eaten your fill, take a piece of aluminum foil and hold it over the opening. Here’s the tricky part: heat the aluminum with an iron to make a DIY seal. The warmed foil will keep air out of the bundle, guaranteeing that everything inside stays fresh until you’re prepared to snack once more.
Keep a Paint Brush Wet
Need to take a break from painting and pick up where you left off in the morning? Don’t burden yourself with cleaning the paintbrush – just keep it wet and ready to go! Simply cover it in a wet paper towel and then wrap it in a sheet of aluminum foil. Use a rubber band to secure the foil at the base of the handle.
Source: oldhouseonline.com
This will prevent the paint from drying and damaging your brushes. For prolonged wet-brush storage, place the wrapped brush in the freezer. Just don’t forget to defrost the brush for an hour or so before you start painting again.
Clean Casserole Dishes with Ease
Did you know that you can make your glass casserole dish shine with a plain ball of aluminum foil? Next time you need to clean a greasy casserole dish, grab a small sheet of foil then ball it up into a manageable, fist-sized cleaning tool.
Source: novate.ru
With a little pressure, the ball of foil should easily wipe out the stuck-on mess of food. Here’s a hack to reduce waste: Use the foil you covered the casserole with rather than tearing off a new sheet. You’re welcome!
Create Perfect Popsicles
Aluminum foil keeps popsicle sticks in place and helps the delicious treats freeze faster. For homemade popsicle molds, fill glass or plastic cups with your popsicle ingredients. Leave extra room at the top as the liquid will spread as it freezes.
Source: jmuo.com
Wrap the cups with a sheet of aluminum foil and stab popsicle sticks through the center so they stand straight up. Freeze the popsicles until solid. All that’s left to do now is enjoy perfect homemade popsicles thanks to this simple hack!
A Foil Phone Fix
Interestingly, touchscreens respond to aluminum foil. Just like your bare fingers, aluminum can conduct electricity. All you have to do is cover a pen or your finger with some foil and you can use your touchscreen without leaving any marks on it. This is also a great way to use your touchscreen on cold days without having to remove your gloves.
Source: bridoz.com
Did you know that E.A. Johnson developed the first finger-controlled touchscreen in 1965? His gadget included a capacitive touch screen and was well ahead of its time.
Eliminate Rust From Your Radiator
The more seasoned the radiator, the more rust it will gather, and after a while, it becomes incredibly hard to eliminate. You will be glad (and surprised) to realize that a little ketchup and aluminum foil can resolve this issue!
Source: Rekha Dhillon | Mrs Hinch cleaning tips and tricks - Facebook
Simply apply a little ketchup to the corroded parts of the radiator, then rub with a bundle of aluminum foil. You’ll be thrilled to see that your radiator is as good as new in a jiffy!
Speeding Up Seedling Germination
The process of germinating seeds requires a lot of sun. Lack of enough sunlight may delay the germination process or destroy the seeds altogether. An aluminum foil trick is all you need to help germinate the seeds faster.
Source: Parential
Cut out one side of the box that you want to use for germination and cover the insider with the foil. This will enable you to create a “lightbox” that reflects most sunlight, thereby ensuring that the seedlings receive enough sun for germination.
Creating a Dry Sleeping Place
If you’re on a camping trip, it may be hard to find a dry place to sleep at night. This can be especially problematic when going on a colder camping trip. However, you can make your nights more comfortable during the trip by carrying aluminum foil with you.
Source: Parential
Underneath your sleeping bag, keep a sheet of aluminum foil. The heavy-duty aluminum will prevent the moisture from the ground from getting to your sleeping space and ensure you sleep in a dry place.
Protecting Door Knobs When Painting
When you want to repaint your door or house, you don’t have to remove all the attached hardware. Instead, you only need to buy a painter’s tape and use it with the aluminum foil to protect the hardware from the paint.
Source: One Good Thing By Jillee
Apply the painter’s tape around the edge of the knob in contact with the door and use the aluminum foil to wrap the rest of the handle. As you paint, there’ll be no risk of dealing with paint spills on the untargeted hardware.
Keeping the Matches Dry
When going on a camping trip, there’s a risk of your things getting soaked along the way. However, nothing can make the trip even more tragic than learning that most of your essential items, including matches and food, cannot be used because they are wet.
Source: Parential
If you’re planning for a trip, ensure you wrap all of your important items to prevent them from getting soaked. As aluminum foil and plastic wrap are water-resistant, consider wrapping your items in these resources or ensuring they are properly sealed in a plastic bag.
Can You Cook Salmon in Your Dishwasher?
Yes, it’s true. Dishwasher salmon exists and it’s taking the internet by surprise. When in its dryer phase, dishwashers can heat up to 130 to 140 degrees, which is an ideal temperature for poaching salmon. Think of the dishwasher as a type of sous-vide machine in which you can cook items slow in a warm bath of water.
Photography: Nick Connellan
As for where aluminum foil comes in handy, wrap your salmon in foil, place it on the top rack of your dishwasher and “cook” your salmon from the dryer phase’s steam. Just don’t put soap in the machine and try washing your dished along with it.
DIY A Child's Photo Studio
Make a fun project for your kids and do a makeshift photoshoot. It will be a cool project to highlight their favorite stuffed animals.
Tape aluminum foil over cardboard to create a simple yet effective light reflector for your next photo shoot.
Protect Against Forrest Fires With Foil
Just as aluminum foil can work well in the garden, it can help protect tree trunks as well. If you like in an area with frequent wildfires, try protecting your trees by wrapping their trunks in aluminum foil.
CREDIT: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
This trick was used by the National Park Service to protect trees from specific forest fires. In the image above, firefighters wrapped the General Sherman tree (the world’s largest tree) in aluminum foil as wildfires were blazing in the area.
Easy Clean Up
Cleaning up food residue and grease from your pots and pans after cooking can be a pain. If you’re looking for an easier method for clean up, try aluminum foil.
Source: pinterest
Use aluminum foil to line the bottom of your pan before cooking. When you’re done, you can remove and throw out the aluminum foil while the bottom of your pan stays clean and ready for tomorrow.
Keep Your Coffee Warm
Starting the day right with a cup of Joe is a crucial step in many people’s mornings. However, once the steaming cup of coffee cools down to room temperature, who really wants to drink it?
Well, instead of letting your coffee get cold, try wrapping your cup or mug in aluminum foil to help your beverage retain its heat. This is a simple DIY solution for those without insulated cups.
Wrap Your Feet in Tin Foil
For those who suffer from fatigue and aching feet, try wrapping them in aluminum foil or plastic wrap. The foil can help relieve joint pain after a long day on your feet.
Aluminum foil can also help relieve phantom pain from someone who has a missing limb yet still experiences this phenomenon. The foil helps redirect the joint pain in your body for temporary relief.
Fix Your Candles
Who doesn’t love scented candles? They are a great decorative piece to have around your home. Their ambience and scents can truly bring a room together, especially with seasonal smells.
littlethings.com
However, sometimes candles with multiple wicks do not burn evenly and the wax ends up pooling significantly to one side. But if you wrap your candle with aluminum foil, this trick will help distribute the heat evenly throughout the candle for a more even burn.
DIY Cookie Cutters
Just as you can use aluminum foil to help shape your cake pans to make custom shapes, you can do this for cookies too! Shaped cookies are a popular treat among holidays and birthdays, but if you don’t have the exact cookie cutter you need, you can create one yourself!
©mypapercrane
Simply fold and wrap your aluminum foil into a long strip about 1-inch thick. Now bend your strip in as many ways as needed until you create your desired shape. Finally, attach the two ends together and you have your very own cookie cutters!
Teeth Whitening
Aluminum foil may be able to help whiten your teeth too. First, you must create a mixture of baking soda and toothpaste then spread a thick layer of this mixture out onto a strip of aluminum foil.
Instagram/ @madinashrienzada
Now put the strip over your teeth and wait around an hour while the mixture works its magic. After one hour, remove the foil then rinse your mouth and teeth to freshen up.
Curl Your Hair With Foil
Looking to get salon-level curls from the comfort of your own home? Aluminum foil might be exactly what you’re in search of. To start, take strips of aluminum foil then roll small sections of your hair around the foil. You can easily manipulate the foil to help it stay in place.
Ohmymag
Continue the process until all your hair is wrapped in aluminum foil strips. Depending upon your hair type, you may wish to lightly spray your hair with water while its wrapped in foil. Now wait 20 or more minutes, remove the foil, and enjoy the curls!
Create a Facemask
Bring the spa to your home and make a versatile-use facemask. Cut out holes for your eyes and nose in a sheet of aluminum foil. Next, place the sheet into the freezer (for faster freezing and to add a hydrating layer, spritz some water onto it).
Source: facebook
Once it’s frozen, take it out of the freezer and put it over your face for 10 minutes or so. The cold will tighten your pores, reduce puffiness, and give your skin a tightened complexion. This is also helpful for hangovers and headaches.
Catch Ice Cream Drips
If you have young ones or are just trying to prevent sticky fingers, this one’s for you. Wrap the bottom of an ice cream cone with some tin foil and it will catch all the melted ice cream and sprinkles.
Source: facebook
This makes cleaning up way easier and keeps everyone’s hands from being sticky messes after a delicious treat.
Create an Artist’s Palette
To create an artist’s palette, first cut an oval from some cardboard or strong card for the base. Next, cover it with tinfoil. That’s it! You can apply the paint directly onto the foil and the clean up is easy as can be.
Source: reddit
If you already have a palette that you work from, using tin foil over it is a great way to ease the hassle of cleaning up as well as preserve paint for the next day.
Create Makeshift Cutlery
If you ever find yourself unpacking all your kitchen supplies only to discover that you forgot the cutlery on your next camping trip, fear not. The malleability of aluminum foil is perfect for constructing your own cutlery.
Source: reddit
This is also great for backpackers or those who don’t want to lug around excess weight and are confident in their ability to craft their cutlery.
Freeze Your Foil To Further Help With Joint Pain
If you are experiencing muscle or joint pain, we already learned we can use aluminum foil to alleviate the pain. Just leave it there for the entire day or overnight for best results. To keep the foil in place, wrap it with a bandage or band-aid.
Source: tv3.lt
For added alleviating properties, put the aluminum foil inside the freezer first before wrapping it around the aching regions. Wrap the foil around arms, knees, legs, or fingers.
Improve Your Outdoor Lighting
Brighten up the electrical lighting in your front or backyard or campsite! Create a foil reflector for behind the light. From there, attach the reflector to the fixture with a couple of strips of electrical tape or duct tape.
Source: theverge.com
Make sure that you do not apply the tape directly to the bulb! As this will cause it to burn and could create a fire hazard.
Line Cabinets and Drawers
Foil is the perfect liner for cabinets and drawers for two reasons. First, it is incredibly easy to clean with a damp sponge, or even easier to swap out if you want to replace your lining entirely.
Source: diaforetiko.gr
The second reason aluminum foil is great for lining your cabinets and drawers is to help reflect light into the cabinet’s dark corners so you can better see inside.
Conceal a Credit Card
For those of us with a “swipeless” credit card with an RFID chip (not a traditional credit card with a magnetic strip), we are a bit more vulnerable to con artists collecting account information through our wallet.
The risk is very minimal, but if the thought still makes you uneasy, you can wrap your credit cards in aluminum foil to deflect the scanner.
Foil the Birds
While some of us are bird-watchers, some of us are not and want to keep the birds away. If you have a bountiful garden you are trying to protect or large windows you want to keep birds safe from, aluminum foil is your friend.
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The foil acts as a reflective agent to keep birds away. Hang strips around any area you want birds to keep away from.
DIY Frying Pan
If you’re going on a backpacking trip or just plain ole’ don’t feel like lugging a frying pan around on your next camping trip, you can make your own. Find a stick with a large fork, enough room to cook whatever food you want.
Source: facebook
You will need heavy duty aluminum foil for this and should probably use two layers. Center the forked stick over the two layers and wrap the edges of the foil tightly around the forked branches. Leave some slack in the foils between the forks.
Hide the Worn Spots On Your Mirrors
If you’re not feeling the vintage look on your mirrors, you can use aluminum foil to disguise small flaws on your mirror’s reflective surface. To do this put a piece of foil with the shiny side facing out on the back of the glass beneath the tarnished location.
Source: facebook
Attach it with masking tape to hold it in place to the backing behind the mirror or to the frame. Do not attack it to the mirror itself.
A Helpful Photography Tool
In professional photography, it is a common practice to use reflectors to throw light onto dark areas or even out the overall lighting of a subject. You can use aluminum foil to create your own reflector! Lightly coat a piece of heavy cardboard with rubber cement and then cover it with aluminum foil, shiny side out.
Source: slrlounge.com
You can make a single reflector as large as you desire, or make a three panel reflector. You can join them together with duct tape so that they stand up by themselves as well as fold for handy storage and transport.
Shine Your Chrome Objects
In order to make your chrome items sparkle, use aluminum foil! You can use it on appliances, strollers, golf club shafts, older car bumpers, or whatever else you can think of. Crumple up a handful of aluminum foil with the shiny side facing out and apply some good old fashioned elbow grease.
Source: WikiHow
For the most part the rust spots will come out. Please do note that the “chrome” on new cars is in fact plastic–DO NOT rub this with aluminum foil.
Attach a Patch
If you find that you have a small hole in one of your favorite articles of clothing, an iron-on patch is a great way to fix it. The problem with patchwork is that sometimes it can stick to the ironing board, which is not favorable.
Source: alwatanvoice.com
Aluminum foil is a great way to avoid this. Put a piece of aluminum foil under the hole and slip it out once you are finished.
Protect Tree Trunks
Rabbits, mice, and other small animals often will feed on the bark of young trees to sustain during the winter. If you want to protect your trees, a cheap and effective deterrent is to wrap the tree trunks with a double layer of heavy-duty foil.
Source: Facebook
The best time to do this is the late fall. Just be sure to remove the foil come springtime so your trees can flourish.