When we think of aluminum foil, we generally think of two uses: to wrap up foods and to cook foods in. While wrapping your plastic wrapped foods with aluminum foil before tossing in the freezer is still a good idea, some experts say that cooking your food in foil is a big no-no as the metal may leach into your food, which can be unhealthy.
There are, however, plenty of surprising ways to use aluminum foil in your home that doesn’t involve food, here are our favorites.
Iron Faster
You can make your clothes wrinkle-free faster by placing a piece of foil underneath your ironing board cover. This prevents the board from sucking up all the heat and reflects the heat back through the clothing.
Photography Lighting
If you’re trying to take some nice photos, you can make your own light reflector by rubber cementing some aluminum foil to a piece of cardboard. Instead of shelling out cash for fancy equipment, this method works just as well.
BBQ Drip Pan
If you want to clean out your barbecue grill less frequently you can prevent meat juice from dripping into it by shaping a pan out of a few sheets of foil and placing it on top of your coals and under your meat.
Clean Your Grill
Place a layer of aluminum foil on your grill while the coals are still burning. This will burn off any chunks of food. Leave it there until your grill cools down. Once it’s cool you can crumple up the foil and use it to scrub the grill.
Increase Outdoor Lighting
Place a layer of tin foil behind any backyard or campsite lights to increase the amount of light. You can tape the foil to the fixture but make sure you don’t tape it directly to the bulb.
Shine Up Chrome
You can shine up any piece of chrome with some foil by crumpling and using the shiny side to buff it up.
Cake Decorating
If you don’t have one of those pastry decorating bags you can fashion one out of aluminum foil. Just mold it in the shape of a tube and fill it with frosting. Or use can make just the tip out of foil and use plastic wrap for the bag. Just toss it out when you’re done.
Keep Matches Dry
If you’re going camping you can wrap your matches in some foil to prevent them from getting wet.
Fish Lure
Wrap some aluminum foil around a fishing hook to attract fish.
Keep a Paintbrush From Drying Out
Squeeze out excess paint and wrap it tightly in foil. Place a rubber band around the foil to secure it at the base of the handle. When you resume painting your brush will still be wet and you won’t have to clean them in between uses. This works great if you’re taking a lunch break while painting.
Prevent Paint From Drying
A layer of dry paint can form on top of your half-use paint can and look like the skin that sometimes forms on soup. To prevent these chunks from ruining your smooth paint job, place a disc shape of foil inside of the paint can and on top of the paint after you’re done using it.
Then blow into the can and put the top on. The carbon dioxide in your breath will replace some oxygen in the can that would dry out your paint.
Funnel
Need a funnel but don’t have one? Fashion one from some heavy duty aluminum foil.
Fix Vinyl Floor Tile
If you have a vinyl floor tile that becomes loose, just put it back in place and lay a piece of foil over it. Then, run a hot iron over it a few time until you feel the glue melt underneath it. Place something heavy on top of it for a while until it sets.
Sharpen Scissors
Fold smoothed foil pieces into layers and cut through them with scissors. They should be sharpened after seven or eight pass throughs.
Keep Your Sleeping Bag Dry
Place aluminum foil under your sleeping bag to keep your sleeping bag dry.
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