Aluminum foil can come in handy around the household for covering food and keeping heat in. But there are lots of other ways you can use aluminum foil around your home that have nothing to do with food.
Here are 45 mind-boggling ways to use aluminum that you’ll wish you knew so much sooner!
1. WiFi Booster
Aluminum foil can help give you a better WiFi signal. Fold a piece of foil into a rectangle shape that’s about 4″ by 6″ and bend the shiny part inwards into a curved shape. Place it behind your router. Learn more below.
2. Heal Small Burns
3. Repel Garden Insects
Use aluminum foil to keep garden pests away. Cut up a few strips of aluminum foil and place it in your mulch. You can also place it at the base of plants and trees to get rid of mice, bugs, and squirrels. Use rocks to hold it down if you need to.
4. Curl Your Hair
Forget the curlers. All you need for perfectly curled hair is some tin foil and a flat iron. Watch the video below for all the details.
5. Get Rid Of Rust
Aluminum foil works great to get rid of rust. Ball up a piece of foil and dip it in distilled vinegar. Use it to rub away rust.
6. Soften Brown Sugar
Use aluminum foil to de-clump brown sugar. Wrap up your solid chunks in foil. Place it in the oven for 5 minutes at 300 degrees to soften.
7. Polish Silverware and Jewelry
Line a dish with aluminum foil and pour a cup of hot water in it. Mix in a tablespoon of salt and baking soda. Drop your discolored jewelry in and let it sit for 10 minutes before you rinse it off.
8. DIY Dryer Sheets
Stop buying dryer sheets. Crumple up some aluminum foil into balls. Toss it into your dryer to soften up your clothes.
9. Clean Your Grill
Cover your grill with aluminum foil while it’s still cool. Close the lid and heat up your grill for 15 to 20 minutes. Turn off the grill, bunch up your foil with tongs and scrub your grill racks.
10. Makeover Your Furniture
Give your furniture a new look with aluminum foil. Just decoupage the foil to your furniture. Learn how here.
11. Sharpen Your Scissors
Use aluminum foil to sharpen up your scissors. Fold up several pieces of foil. Cut through with your scissors several times.
12. Create A Funnel
This is great in a pinch if you don’t have a funnel. Fold over pieces of foil. Shape it into a funnel.
13. Strong Contact Paper
Protect cabinets and drawers with aluminum foil. Fold over foil and cut it to fit in your cabinets. Use it as a cabinet or drawer liner.
14. Turn AAA Into AA Batteries
Need some AA batteries but only have AAA? Place aluminum foil between your battery and the coil. This can work with other ill-fitting batteries too.
15. Protect a Doorknob
If you need to keep your doorknob from getting dirty or scratched during a move or while painting, you can put a bit of aluminum foil over it.
16. DIY Piping Bag
You can fold the tin foil into a funnel shape and snip off the tip, then place it in a frosting bag for accurate frosting.
17. Clean Cast Iron
Cast iron skillets can often rust easily but you’re not supposed to wash them with soap and water. Instead, you can use a rolled up ball of tin foil to scrub away the rust and dirt.
18. Protect Pie Crust
If you’re making a tasty pie, but don’t want your crust to burn or fall off, you can wrap tin foil around the edge to keep from getting ruined.
19. Cook Salmon
It might seem obvious that tin foil can be used to cook food but did you know tin foil actually works best for cooking salmon? You can make the tastiest salmon in foil pouches, which is when you carefully create a little pouch to cover the salmon so it cooks inside the tin foil.
20. Seal Your Food
If you want to keep things extra fresh, like a bag of chips or a bag of brown sugar, you can seal the bag using tin foil and an iron. It’s as simple as that!
21. Keep Things Hot
If you’re trying to keep something warm for later, just put a little tin foil over the top and it’ll trap the heat right inside!
22. Keep Soap From Disintegrating
If you’ve ever used a bar or soap in the kitchen or bathroom before, you know that they don’t always last very well. Instead of letting them disintegrate into a mushy mess, you can put a little tin foil underneath to protect it.
23. Fix a pair of jeans
If you rip your jeans, you can iron on a patch or another piece of jean. But you need to put something between the inside of the jeans to keep the patch from sticking to the other side. Slip some tin foil in the pants before you iron the patch on!
24. Enhance Natural Light For Your Plants
If your plants are struggling to get natural light, you can line a shoe box with tin foil and then place the seedlings into the shoebox. The tin foil will then reflect it directly back onto the plants!
25. Make a DIY Cake Pan
You can use tin foil to shape a cake pan of your choice. If you have another cake pan, you can place your DIY pan inside of it for sturdiness.
26. Lift Food Out Of A Pressure Cooker
It can be dangerous work pulling food out of a pressure cooker, but tin foil can keep your fingers and hands safe. You can create a sling to safely lift the food out of the cooker.
27. Use It To Freeze Food
Rather than toss food into a freezer bag, you can wrap it tightly in tin foil. That will keep the flavor in and keep the freezer burn out.
28. Keep Birds Away
If you have birds invading your fruits and plants, you can hand strips of tin foil near the plants and it should keep the birds at bay.
29. Cook Eggs In A Breeze
If you don’t feel like getting fancy with your skillet, you can hack your breakfast using tin foil. There are various recipes for cooking eggs in tin foil that will give you delicious and easy eggs in the AM.
30. Reheat Soggy Pizza
Don’t put your pizza in the microwave! Instead, pop it on a skillet on the stove at medium heat. You can create a dome out of tin foil that will help reheat the pizza perfectly.
31. Avoid Messes In The Oven
If you’re cooking pizza directly on the rack or something that might bubble over, you can put tin foil on a sheet on the rack directly below the food you’re cooking.
32. Move Heavy Furniture
If you are trying to move heavy furniture in a carpeted room, this hack is a great one. You can slide a little tin foil underneath each foot of the furniture and it should be much easier to slide around.
33. Iron Your Clothes Easily
You can lay a piece of tin foil flat on your ironing board and then place your clothes on top. This cuts your ironing in half because having the foil on the other side will help iron both sides in one fell swoop.
34. Cook Camp Food
You can cook food on the campfire easily by wrapping canned food in tin foil and tossing it right in the fire.
35. Keep Your Bananas Fresh For Longer
If you don’t want your bananas to brown in a day or two, you can keep them fresh for much longer by wrapping the top of the peel.
36. Line your paint tray
37. Make a tin foil stylus for your smartphone or tablet
38. Hammered decor balls
39. Pop popcorn
40. Super-clean bakeware
41. Up your photography game
42. Keep veggies crispy and fresh for longer
43. Help ease pain
44. Hotel grilled cheese
45. DIY emergency candle
H/T: Shareably