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.
Source:
iwifirouter.com
2. Heal Small Burns
Place the shiny side of a piece of aluminum foil onto your burn. Keep it covered for 15 to 20 minutes. The pain should be gone by the time you take your foil off.
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.
Source:
Balcony Garden Web
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.
Source:
Green Idea Reviews
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.
Source:
Answers.com
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.
Source:
Pinterest
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.
Source:
Craftsy
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.
Source:
Clean it In Cast Iron
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.
Source:
Instructables
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!
Source:
Diethood
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.
Source:
Fine Art America
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.
Source:
Fine Cooking
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.
Source:
This Old Gal
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.
Source:
Favorite Freezer Foods
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.
Source:
Buyalltraps
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.
Source:
Honest Cooking
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.
Source:
Huffington Post
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.
Source:
Aunt Peaches
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.
Source:
YouTube
36. Line your paint tray
Whether you’re painting the wall or painting a canvas, make clean up a breeze with this foil hack. Just line your paint tray with foil then pour the paint in. When you’re done, just crumple up the foil and toss in the trash!
Source:
Tools-Paint
37. Make a tin foil stylus for your smartphone or tablet
Have you ever gone to draw something on your phone with your finger? It always ends up looking like a toddler did it. Help with creating precise drawings and notes by making a stylus with some tin foil wrapped around a pencil. So much more control!
Source:
Gadget
38. Hammered decor balls
Turn a crumpled up piece of tin foil into a shiny, beautiful decor object. They look beautiful displayed in a bowl on your coffee table! All you need to do is roll up a piece of tin foil into a size that’s slightly bigger than what you want the final product to be. Patiently hammer and compress the ball for approximately 20 minutes until all the folds and wrinkles have been smoothed out. Then, you’ll need to patiently polish it for about an hour.
Source:
The Kids Should See This
39. Pop popcorn
Pop popcorn on your stove top using some aluminum foil with this easy kitchen hack. Place a piece of foil in a skillet and pour in some popcorn kernels and some oil. Place another piece of foil on top and seal the edges. Turn on the heat and watch it pop! Remove from heat once there’s a few seconds between pops.
Source:
Firewood For Life
40. Super-clean bakeware
If you have a cake pan or a cookie sheet that is dirty and covered in grime and grease, clean it with aluminum foil. Use the same process you would with cleaning your silver jewelry. You won’t believe how shiny and new they’ll look again. Head to Clean Mama for the tutorial.
Source:
Clean Mama
41. Up your photography game
You can use aluminum foil as a lighting reflector for staged photography. Just wrap a piece of foil over some cardboard and secure with binder clips. Use this to reflect light for beautiful, well-lit photos.
Source:
Instructables
42. Keep veggies crispy and fresh for longer
Have you ever purchased celery or lettuce and put it in your fridge only to see that it’s become limp and not-so-fresh in just a couple days? Keep your veggies fresh and crisp for longer by wrapping them with tin foil before placing in the fridge.
Source:
Pinterest
43. Help ease pain
Did you know foil can help soothe and ease muscle and joint pain? According to Little Things, “This is because it supposedly regulates one’s body’s biological pathways, called meridians, that energy flows through. This soothes different areas in the body and helps alleviate pain and speed up healing times. The foil’s chemical elements help make this unique healing process happen — it seems to good to be true until you try it!”
Source:
Vorply
44. Hotel grilled cheese
If you’re staying in a motel or hotel, your options for cooking are pretty limited. But if you’re on a budget, you can make a super yummy grilled cheese using some foil and an iron (and the bread and cheese of course). Just build the sandwich and wrap in foil. Set a hot iron on top of it and wait for 10 minutes. Yummy!
Source:
Instructables
45. DIY emergency candle
Has the power gone out but you don’t have any flashlights or candles? Make one using an empty can, some oil, a piece of twine, and some foil. Just place some cooking oil inside the empty can and put a piece of foil on top. Cut a small slit on top of the foil and thread in some twine. Light it and you’re good to go!
Source:
YouTube
H/T: Shareably