Ingenious Aluminum Foil Hacks That Will Make You Want To Stock Up!
Aluminum foil is a ubiquitous kitchen essential that, for many, serves primarily as a tool for cooking or wrapping food items. It’s an item routinely picked up at the grocery store, but more often than not, it remains tucked away in the pantry or kitchen drawer, with its full potential overlooked. However, the truth is that aluminum foil is a versatile household asset that offers a wealth of applications that extend well beyond its typical culinary uses, and it’s high time we uncovered its hidden potential.
While it’s undeniable that aluminum foil is a valuable tool for cooking and preserving the freshness of your meals, it’s essential to recognize that its utility goes far beyond the kitchen. So, go ahead and grab that roll of aluminum foil that’s been idly waiting in your pantry, and let’s explore the numerous alternative applications it offers.
Less Mess, Better Egg Shape
Adding a layer of aluminum foil to your frying pan before cooking eggs can reduce the time spent cleaning. Just mold the foil to the pan and add some cooking spray to prevent sticking.
Home cooks have also shared that creating indentations in the foil can help you create an egg with a perfect shape. This is also a good hack if you’re aiming to make an egg scramble that you can wrap up for later.
Keep Those Scissors Sharp
Like any other cutting edge, scissors get dull with age. Even if you take good care of them, eventually, they’re going to be less effective than the first time you use them. Not only is a dull pair of scissors annoying, but they can also be dangerous to use if you’re not extremely careful.
A simple trick to keep scissors sharp or eliminate any rust from the blade is to cut a piece of aluminum foil around seven to ten times.
Block Cell Phone Signal
If you want to block your cell phone from receiving any signals, simply use aluminum foil. Radio waves and fields that give your cell phone service can be blocked out by aluminum foil.
For this hack, wrap the foil around your cell phone. You should not be able to make any calls or receive any signals once this is done, as a cell phone surrounded on all sides by foil shouldn’t receive any radio waves.
Stop Thieves From Breaking Into Your Car
The majority of drivers today use a key fob to access to unlock and start their car. Key fobs emit a short-range, wireless radio signal from the key to the vehicle. Drivers should be aware that criminals may be able to amplify and intercept this transmission if their fob is within close access to the car, around 300 feet or less, according to Sevan Locks And Doors.
To help protect against criminals, keep your key fob more than 300 feet away from your car. In an interview with Detroit Free Press, Holly Hubert, a cybersecurity expert, said that wrapping the fob in tinfoil can reduce the wireless radio signal.
No Panini Press, No Problem!
If you’re someone who doesn’t like to settle for a typical cold sandwich, using some aluminum foil can elevate any old sandwich to panini greatness! Take the sandwich you have just prepared and put it on a cooking sheet or on a griddle.
Next, wrap any standard brick you may have lying around outside and wrap it in aluminum foil. Put the brick on the top of the sandwich while it’s in the oven or cooking on the griddle and enjoy!
Clean Off Stuck-On Food
If you’ve ever baked lasagna or some type of casserole, you know that the cleanup is going to be rough. That dish is going to need to soak in the sink for a while if you ever hope to scrub off all the stuck-on food.
Thanks to aluminum foil, you can significantly cut down the time of the cleaning process by using the foil to scrape off the food that feels practically glued on. You can even reuse the foil you used to cover the dish!
Boost Your WiFi Signal
Believe it or not, if your Wi-Fi signal is feeling a little slow, aluminum foil can help. Tear off a sheet of foil and fold it into a rectangle about 4 inches by 6 inches, depending on the size of your router.
Then, bend it into a curve with the shinier side facing toward your Wi-Fi router. Incredibly, this helps boost the signal of your Wi-Fi, so you don’t have to wait ten minutes for one video to load.
Make Your Silverware Shine Like New
Nobody wants to own or have to use silverware that looks old and dirty, even if it’s fresh out of the dishwasher. People will go to extreme lengths to get their silverware or other silver products spotless, whether it’s scrubbing them for hours on end or spending money on expensive cleaning products.
However, none of that is necessary as long you have some aluminum foil lying around. All you have to do is put some foil at the bottom of a container, add baking soda, salt, and boiling water. Then, place your silverware in and let it sit for around an hour. They’ll come out looking good as new.
Heal Minor Burns Quickly
We’ve all somehow managed to give ourselves a minor burn on our fingertips, whether it’s touching a pan that’s too hot, an iron, or anything hot enough to damage the skin.
While most people’s first instinct might be to put their finger in their mouth or run it under hot water, what you should do is reach for the aluminum foil. Wrap the injured part in the foil and leave it on for at least 15 to 20 minutes. The pain should be gone by then!
Create A Non-Stick Pan
Without using oils, butter, or spending your money on a non-stick pan, to keep your food from sticking, cut out a piece of aluminum foil to fit the bottom of the cookware that you are using.
It works quite well, and it also means that you don’t have to cook with oil, which is extremely beneficial for your health. Also, aluminum foil is much cheaper than most cooking oils you’ll find at the store so you could end up saving money!
Don’t Let Your Bananas Go To Waste
While bananas are an extremely popular fruit around the world, one of people’s biggest issues with them is that they go from unripe to ripe, to overly ripe in what feels like the blink of an eye.
What happens is that the bananas release gas, which reacts with oxygen, resulting in the speeding up of the process, which usually happens at the stem. So, if you wrap the stem with aluminum foil, either individually or as a bunch, they’ll last for days longer.
Say Goodbye To Clumpy Brown Sugar
Unless you blow through brown sugar at a superhuman rate, for most people, when a recipe finally calls for the ingredient, they usually are encountered with a hard and clumpy bag of the stuff. have no fear, there’s a simple solution to this all too common situation.
Preheat your oven to 300 degrees, wrap the hard parts in foil, and put it in the oven for around five minutes. When you take it out, it will be like a fresh bag bought from the store.
Slide Furniture On The Floor With Ease
Moving large pieces of furniture isn’t always the easiest task. If it’s really heavy and you’re trying to drag it the legs can create friction, not only making the job harder but can end up damaging the floor.
To make the furniture slide across the floor with ease, place pieces of aluminum foil underneath each leg, and be amazed. With minimal effort, the furniture your moving will glide easily across the floor like skates on ice.
Train Your Pets To Stay Off Furniture
For some reason, most common household pets hate the feeling of aluminum foil on their paws, most likely because of the noise and lack of grip. So, if you’re trying to train your furry friend to stay off of the furniture, aluminum foil might be the key to your success.
Lay sheets of foil on top of the surfaces that you are trying to prevent them from climbing. Of course, you can remove it if you need to use the surface, but after a few weeks, they’ll stay far away.
Make Your Own Cookie Cutters
Cookie cutters are great, but the only problem with them is that there are only so many options that are available. If you want to be creative and make ones that are especially unique, that’s where aluminum foil can come in handy.
Using enough foil so that it’s sturdy, mold the foil to create any kind of shapes that you want. Not only is it simple and cheap, but adds an extra element to the cookie-baking process that makes it even more fun!
Keep Ants From Climbing
Anyone with an ant problem will be happy to learn this aluminum foil hack. Since ants are skilled climbers, they can easily scale the legs of a kitchen table to get to your food. Create a road block for ants using aluminum foil.
Since the foil is slippery, ants won’t be able to scale it like they can with a door or regular wall. Place a section of the foil where you want to block the ants or wrap the table legs in the foil to prevent them from climbing. You can apply Vicks VapoRub to it to make it even more difficult for the ants.
Eliminate The Static From Your Clothes In The Dryer
Peeling apart clothes while putting them away or even shocking yourself makes doing laundry all that much worse. Although there are tons of products on the market that claim to help remove the static from your clothes while in the dryer, all you really need is aluminum foil.
Create balls using about three or four feet of aluminum foil, compressing them as tightly as you can so they can’t snag on any clothing. Using around three balls, depending on the size of the load, throw them in the dryer with your clothes and no more static!
Speed Up Your Ironing Process
If you think that ironing is a laborious process that takes way too long, this is the perfect tip for you! When ironing, a lot of the heat from the iron gets lost on the board itself, meaning you have to go over a wrinkle multiple times to flatten it out.
However, if you put a piece of foil beneath the fabric that you’re ironing, it will act as a conductor that reflects the heat through the clothing, getting the wrinkle out faster.
Get The Most Out Of Your Batteries
If you notice that one of your battery-powered appliances is on its way out, and you don’t have any more batteries on hand, aluminum foil can come to the rescue. Simply bundle small pieces of aluminum foil on the positive end of the battery, making sure that it’s touching both the battery and the wall of the battery holder.
This will help improve contact with the terminals, giving them a longer life. It won’t last forever, but it can help in a pinch.
Keep Your Door Knobs Paint-Free
When painting anything, one of the main goals is to not get paint on anything except for what you intend to finish. If you don’t want to go through the process of taking a doorknob off when painting a door, not getting paint on it can be tricky.
Yet, using aluminum foil, you can wrap the knob tightly, running a utility knife around the base of the knob so you can paint as close as possible. You can also do this to any knobs that you may end up touching with paint on your hands.
Charlie Golsley
