30+ Uses For Aluminum Foil And Plastic Wrap That Will Improve Your Life
You might be surprised to learn that your kitchen wraps have a plethora of applications. Aluminum foil and plastic wrap are useful for much more than just keeping leftovers fresh. Here are 35 ways to use these household items both inside and outside the kitchen.
Make Perfect Bacon
A sheet of tin foil can be used to make the ideal roasting pan for crispy bacon. Fold it in strips multiple times to make a fan shape and place it on a regular baking sheet.
Make Perfect Bacon
All of the greases will fall into the grooves, leaving your bacon perfectly crisp. Not only that, but you’ll make far less of a mess: toss the greasy foil in the trash when you’re done.
Baking Tray Dividers
This one is for when you need to bake several things at the same time. Line your baking sheet with tin foil, bunching pieces together to form dividers to separate the various foods that need to be cooked.
Baking Tray Dividers
This keeps any juices or sauces from seeping through to the other side, which is useful if you’re making two dishes that wouldn’t go well together. Separate the flavors so you can decide whether or not to combine them on your plate.
Perfectly Poached Eggs
Making poached eggs is a pain. However, with a little plastic wrap and a little time, you can make them quickly. Wrap a piece of plastic wrap around a glass or bowl, drizzle with oil, and crack an egg into it.
Perfectly Poached Eggs
The plastic wrap should then be twisted and tied into small pouches before being placed in boiling water. Finally, use a pair of scissors to free your perfectly poached eggs once they’re cooked to your liking.
DIY Steamer
Steaming food does not necessitate the use of expensive kitchenware. For example, you can put a few hunks of tin foil in a cooking pot with boiling water if you roll them into balls.
DIY Steamer
Place the vegetables or meat steamed on a heat-resistant dish and prop it up with the foil balls. Then, without cleaning your wire colander or fancy steamer pot insert, cover the pot and enjoy steamed food.
Clean Your Silver
If your silverware or silver jewelry has become dull and tarnished, you can use aluminum foil to line a dish and follow some simple steps to restore its luster. Aluminum triggers a chemical reaction that cleans your house for you.
Clean Your Silver
Combine one tablespoon baking soda and a teaspoon of salt in a foil-lined baking dish, then pour in half a cup of vinegar (slowly!). After that, pour in a cup of boiling water. Then, 30 seconds later, add your silver pieces to the mixture, and voila!
Makeshift Piping Bag
A real piping bag comes with various nozzles that can be used to create intricate frosting patterns. However, if you aren’t concerned with perfection and don’t want to clean it, aluminum foil will suffice.
Makeshift Piping Bag
For this hack, heavy-duty foil is preferable, but regular foil will suffice if you wrap enough layers. Then, roll it into a cone, fill it with (preferably) soft frosting, close the top, and crown those cupcakes like dessert kings and queens!
No More Paint Skin
You’ll understand what I mean when I say “paint skin” if you’ve ever decided to use up some leftover house paint in your garage. Before sealing the can, cut a circle of aluminum and place it on top of the top layer of paint to prevent it from drying out and making a mess (leaving clumps in the paint!).
No More Paint Skin
You can also replace some of the oxygen with carbon dioxide by taking a deep breath, exhaling into the can, and quickly sealing it. This will slow the drying process.
Protect Your Paint Brushes
It can take days to paint a room or a house. So, while you’re waiting for those paint coats to dry, here’s an easy way to reduce clean-up and preserve your painting tools.
Protect Your Paint Brushes
To keep your paint roller and brushes from drying out and becoming crusty and useless, wrap them in plastic wrap. If you need to keep the moisture in for longer than 24 hours, aluminum foil will help.
Keep Your Matches Dry
If you enjoy being outside, you’re probably already aware of this tip. Nothing is more frustrating than going on a camping trip and having your pack fall into a lake.
Keep Your Matches Dry
It’s either that or your belongings will get wet if it rains. So wrap your most important items, and even more so your matches, in tin foil to protect them from moisture.
Sleep on a Dry Surface
Aluminum rolls can be surprisingly heavy. You can use this trick to help you sleep at night if you’re going on a less active camping trip that doesn’t include much hiking.
Sleep On A Dry Surface
To keep moisture from the ground from seeping through the bottom comforter, place a sheet of heavy-duty aluminum underneath your sleeping bag. It’ll probably keep you dry, but if you enjoy being outside, you’d probably rather have a little dampness than waste a lot of foil.
Custom Shaped Cake Trays
You can make a cake pan in any shape you want out of tin foil if you’ve ever wanted to bake a cake that wasn’t a boring circle or rectangle.
Custom Shaped Cake Trays
Needless to say, you might want to start with something simple, such as a heart. Then, Lindsay Ann Bakes on YouTube shows how to make them as sturdy as possible for a successful shaped cake!
Sharpen Your Scissors
There is no need to take your scissors to be sharpened if they have become dull. Instead, a hunk of aluminum foil folded at least three times will probably be sufficient.
Sharpen Your Scissors
The additional layers of aluminum foil will help sharpen the blades of the scissors multiple times with each cut of the foil now that you have a thick, folded strip.
Sun for Seedlings
If you’re starting an indoor garden and have seeds that need to germinate, they will benefit from a lot of sunlight. Cut one side of a shoebox out and cover it with tin foil on the inside.
Sun For Seedlings
This creates a sort of “lightbox” that reflects the sun’s rays onto your plants, ensuring that they have enough light to start their lives healthy. Allow light to reflect on the sun box by placing it near a sunny window. The sun will encourage faster growth.
Protect Your Doorknobs
When you want to repaint your doors, don’t waste time removing all of the hardware. Instead, tape the edge of the knob that touches the door with painter’s tape…then wrap aluminum foil around the rest of the doorknob or handle.
Protect Your Doorknobs
It will be protected from your sloppy painting job and will be simple to remove and discard once the paint is dry. Also, it will keep paint from leaking through the cracks.
Roll Dough with No Mess
Pull out a roll of plastic wrap the next time you get out your rolling pin. Next, place a sheet of parchment paper on top of your cutting board or whatever surface you’re going to use to flatten the dough.
Roll Dough With No Mess
The dough is then placed on top, followed by another layer of plastic wrap. This prevents greasy, doughy messes on the surface and your rolling pin! However, it’s not recommended to use it frequently because it causes some pastries to bake unevenly.
Make Your Own Funnel
Do you need to pour something into a bottle with a narrow neck? Don’t have a funnel in the kitchen? There’s no need to be concerned because you don’t require one.
Make Your Own Funnel
Roll a piece of aluminum foil into a cone shape and use it to pour liquids, grains, or other difficult-to-pour substances into whatever fancy bottles you want. We’d recommend rolling it several layers thick to prevent it from being knocked out of place by a stream of liquid, but as long as you pour slowly, it should be fine.
Perfect Pie Crust
It’s a common blunder in the kitchen of any inexperienced baker. Your pie is perfectly cooked in the center, but the crust is almost black and burned. Wrap strands of tin foil around the edges of your pie!
Perfect Pie Crust
This keeps the crusts from being burned by too much heat while the rest of the pie browns nicely. It can be added at the start of baking and removed halfway through, or it can be added if the crust begins to brown too quickly while baking.
Speed Up Ironing
When you iron your clothes, the ironing board absorbs a large portion of the heat from your iron. Underneath your ironing board cover, place a few sheets of aluminum foil.
Speed Up Ironing
This should reflect the heat to your clothes, cutting down on the number of times you have to pass over the wrinkly bits and speeding up the whole tedious process.
Safely Dispose of Hot Grease
Because it’s difficult to clean the grease left in the frying pan safely, I don’t believe anyone has ever stopped cooking delicious fatty meats like bacon and sausage. But there is a way to dispose of it that does not entail flushing it down the toilet!
Safely Dispose Of Hot Grease
Line the glass with tin foil, make a depression in the center and pour the grease into it while still hot. Then fold the foil corners in, seal it shut, and toss it in the trash!
Keep Mice Outside
Have you ever had mice in your house gnawing on your cereal boxes and bread bags? Perhaps you know how they’re getting in, or you know of a way they COULD get into your home and want to keep them out.
Keep Mice Outside
They’ll leave you alone forever if you roll a ball of tin foil and stuff it in the hole where they’re getting into the house. Mice can chew through a lot of things, but aluminum is not one of them. So make sure you stop it in its tracks while it’s still outside!
Prevent Pests in the Garden
Aluminum foil can be used to protect your garden in a few different ways. First, it helps to repel insects from eating your lush greenery if you add small strips of it to your mulch.
Prevent Pests In The Garden
During the winter, you can also wrap foil around the base of small trees and plants to keep them as warm as possible. It will also deter critters such as squirrels and mice from digging up your garden.
Scrub Cast Iron Pans and Grills
Trying to get rid of caked-on grease is always a pain. However, if you scrunch up a ball of tin foil and scrub, the process should become much easier to manage.
Scrub Cast Iron Pans And Grills
Needless to say, do not attempt this with nonstick frying pans! It can also be used as a BBQ brush to scrape all of the burnt remnants from your grill.
Clean Your Clothes Iron
When it comes to scrubbing irons, the same method can be used to clean the burnt gunk from the bottom of your clothes iron! However, it can be difficult to remove the soap residue that has built up over time.
Clean Your Clothes Iron
And, to be honest, I had no idea you could get rid of it! So your clean but wrinkled clothes will no longer be dirty but instead will be replaced by freshly pressed ones!
Prevent Flour Explosions
If you have one of those fancy electric mixers, you’ve almost certainly turned it on only to have flour fly all over your kitchen. There is, however, a simple solution.
Prevent Flour Explosions
Wrap a piece of plastic wrap around the front of the bowl and mixer to keep your face from getting floured. If you don’t have any, aluminum foil is a great substitute!
Soften Brown Sugar
You don’t have to throw away a bit of hardened brown sugar that has solidified into a solid brick. All you have to do is wrap it in aluminum foil, as you might have guessed.
Soften Brown Sugar
Then bake it for five minutes at 300°F. It should return to its original mushy softness and be ready to sprinkle on your oatmeal or mix into your next baking recipe.
Boost your WiFi
You might be skeptical about the next tin foil hack. However, if your WiFi signal is weak, you might as well give it a shot! First, fold the edges of aluminum foil a few times on each side to make a sturdy sheet.
Boost Your WiFi
It could improve your signal by one or two bars if you put it behind your router. Many people online have confirmed that this worked for them! Try it now to improve your connection!
No Need for Dryer Sheets
This is one way to save money if you use dryer sheets to get rid of static when drying laundry. Instead, toss in a few aluminum foil balls, which will absorb all of the electric charges.
No Need For Dryer Sheets
Static cling on your clothes will no longer be an issue. However, seeing as foil does not come in a variety of fresh scents, keep scented laundry detergent on hand as well.
Keep Bananas Longer
This is a common problem: How many bananas should you buy to ensure that you have enough time to eat them before the last ones turn too brown? It’d be disgusting to eat!
Keep Bananas Longer
If you wrap a piece of plastic wrap around the stems of your banana bunch, it will slow down the ripening process. So, if you like the greener bananas, you should give this hack a try!
Help Heal Minor Burns
We’ve all burned ourselves on the stovetop or in the oven. Even minor burns can be excruciatingly painful for days! However, the pain should go away almost immediately if you wrap aluminum around the burn and leave it for 15 or 20 minutes.
Help Heal Minor Burns
To begin, make sure that the burn is clean and gauzed. Then, wrap the foil inwards, shiny side facing you. It will also keep your skin from becoming overly irritated!
Remove Rust
Is your faucet covered in those unsightly little rust spots? That faucet will be gleaming and new in no time if you use aluminum. Rub the rusty surface with a crumpled-up piece of foil dipped in vinegar.
Remove Rust
It will almost certainly leave some scratches, but the rust will easily peel away. Scratches, on the other hand, appear to be less filthy than rust. After completing this hack, you’ll feel as if you’ve purchased a new one!
Prolong Battery Life
Have the batteries in your remote control run out? And, like most people, you have a large collection of AAAs but none of the AAs. It’s annoying, but what can you do?
Prolong Battery Life
Well, you could crumple a piece of foil to fill the space between the coil and the bottom of a AAA battery. And after that, you will be able to use your AA-only device once more!
Move Heavy Furniture
Here’s a hack you’ve probably never heard of if you still have carpet from the 1990s and need to move a large piece of furniture. Place a small piece of foil, shiny side up, under the leg.
Move Heavy Furniture
You should be able to get that bulky wardrobe in and out with a lot less effort now! The foil is slick enough that you can push the heavy object without having to lift it.
Reseal Plastic Bags
Using a lot of foil and plastic wrap for so many different household tasks could result in a lot of waste. This one, at the very least, will assist you in reusing your plastic bags.
Reseal Plastic Bags
Wrapping the open part of the bag in foil allows you to melt the plastic underneath with a clothes iron or flat iron. This results in a strong seal without melted plastic all over the place.
Clean Your Hot Glue Gun
Hot glue guns can be quite messy at times. While the glue is still warm and gooey, cleaning them is as difficult as cleaning them once they have cooled and hardened.
Clean Your Hot Glue Gun
Plugin your glue gun to warm it up if it becomes overly clumpy. Then, using a large piece of crumpled aluminum foil, twist it around the nozzle. Make sure you don’t get burned!
Prevent Freezer Burn on Ice Cream
Air exposure, according to Ben and Jerry’s, is ice cream’s worst enemy. This is why those pesky ice crystals form on top, reducing the creamy goodness that all ice cream should have.
Prevent Freezer Burn On Ice Cream
You should be able to avoid this problem entirely by simply placing a piece of plastic wrap over the surface of your half-eaten ice cream before replacing the lid.