Aluminum is the most abundant metal you can find in the earth’s outer layer. It is also one of the most widely used materials. You can find it in kitchens, in cars, in buildings, and even in airplanes and in space ships.
Every family has a roll or two aluminum foil in their pantry. They are made of aluminum alloys that are pressed to thin layers of about 0.2 mm. Foils are cheap, flexible, non-permeable to most liquids and gas. It also resists household chemicals and functions as barriers to electrical fields.
1. Brighten It Up
Where is the spice you have not used in a while but sure should be somewhere in the cupboard? The corner is just too dark to see clearly.
You can give the dark place more light by putting foils in the cupboard due to reflection. Now you can see what you are reaching out to.
2. Wrap foil around your foot
Aluminum foil has very many positive benefits. For example, it helps with fatigue, it soothes painful joints, it reduces the pain of burns, and it can even be used to recover from a cold. Aluminum foil has so many uses outside the kitchen.
Get rid of your cold fast! How? Take five to seven pages of aluminum foil and wrap them around your feet. Then leave them like this for an hour. Remove the aluminum foil after an hour to allow your feet to breathe and then do it again. Repeat this process every night. After just two evenings, you will supposedly notice an improvement!
3. Get A Stronger Radiator
It is bitterly cold winter, and your radiator refuses to produce enough heat. You end up huddle around it to get enough warmth.
No need to spend a fortune on a new model. You can wrap foils around big pieces of cardboard. Put them near the radiator to disperse heat more evenly across the room.
4. Prolong Battery Life
Don’t you find it is annoying to constantly change batteries for small household appliances even if you are using those “long-life” ones?
Putting small pieces of foils to both ends of the battery can help them release all the energy inside. You will need to change batteries less often.
5. Clean Up The Iron
Isn’t it so frustrating that when you are ready to iron your freshly washed whiter shirt and find the iron is dirty?
.
No worry. Rub a foil ball against the iron surface. You can do it either cold or hot. In less than a minute, the dirty gunk will be gone.
6. Floor Protector
You push a sofa around to find the best place for it in the living room. Once done, you notice ugly scratches on your new floor.
To prevent this headache, wrap foils around some cardboards and put them under the furniture. Now you can move them around without the fear of floor damage.
7. Boost Wifi Strength
You take your computer to the upstairs bedroom to stream a movie in your bed. But you find it is a dead corner for the Wifi.
You can create a signal booster from aluminum foil– cover some cardstock with it and place it around the router to send signals further.
8. Protect Your Match
The fire is always the highlight of a camping trip. Yet how frustrating it is that when you are ready to set the campfire you find that the matches are wet.
Remember to cover your matches with a piece of foil when packing. Then you will never need to worry about damp matches again.
9. Clean Up the Glue Gun
Hot glue guns are easy to operate and can be used on many types of materials. However, the gunk around their tips is hard to pull off once it is cold.
Solutions? Foil. Grab some crumpled foil and rub the gun when it is hot. The gunk will be gone in seconds.
10. Seal Your Bags
Want to reseal a plastic bag like it is never opened?
Easy solution with foil– cover the bag opening with a piece of foil on top and press on a hot iron very briefly. Now the bag is sealed as you get it from the store.
11. Prevent Messy Painting
You want to refresh that old door by giving it a fresh coat of paint. Yet it is so hard to work around those knobs and handles.
Wrap foils around the doorknobs and handles can make the job much easier. A stray stroke won’t ruin your hours of work.
12. Rejuvenize Mirrors
Mirrors make the room feel roomy and bright. Yet, the reflective silver layers on their back can get dim and dull after some years.
It would be expensive to replace big mirrors. One easy trick– tap or wrap some foils to the back of your old mirror, and it will shine brightly again.
13. Protect Patches
Adding patches to your cloth is an easy way to add personality and styles to existing clothes. They can also help hide some unsightly holes and tears.
But when ironing them, the two layers of clothes beneath the patch tend to stick together too. Add a foil underneath the first layer to prevent the problem.
14. Clean Frying Pan
Fried eggs and sausage are a great breakfast. Yet the oil and sticky brown bits on the bottom of the pan are hard to clean.
How about putting a layer of foil at the bottom of the pan? Once the meal is cooked, crumble the foil, toss it in the trash. Your work is done.
15. Fend Off Static
Dryer sheets can prevent static electricity on your clothes. Yet they are expensive and may leave undesirable chemical residues on your clothes.
Put a ball of crumpled foil into the dryer machine, and when done, your cloth will be free of any statics. Now you can work on electronics without worrying about the shock.
16. More lights for Plants
Who doesn’t like to have some indoor plants to make our life more lovely? Yet not every house can provide enough sunshine for them.
You can put plants in a big box lined with foils. The foils will help to bounce more lights on your plant so it can be healthier.
17. Bigger Fish Catcher
You know that sunlight will attract fish. Do you know that you can create something using light as bait to catch them?
Wrap some foil around your fish hook and drop it into the water. You will surely see more fish attracted to it better than worms due to the reflective lights.
18. Makeshift Cooking Wares
Cooking is fun during a camping trip. Unfortunately, you tend to forget to pack the pan and pot you need for a meal beyond roasted hotdogs.
No worry. Fold some foils into a disposable frying pan or pot. You can simply throw out your “pan” when you finish eating.
19. Fix Vinyl Tiles
Vinyl tiles are cheap and easy to install. But after a while, they tend to lose the adhesion power on the back and get loose.
No need for the hassle of changing new tiles. Put a layer of aluminum foil over the loose tiles and iron it. The tiles will stick on again.
20. Anti-Scan Cover For Credit Cards
When paying with RFID credit cards you need only a tap and no pin required. That means criminals can use a payment device closer to your card to steal money.
Wrap your card with foil to block data transmission and your account is protected.
21. Light Adjuster for Photograph
The most important factor affecting a photo is the lighting, and the existing lights in an environment are seldom ideal.
Simply cover a big piece of cardboard with aluminum foil and use it to add lights to where you need it. Your photograph can look like it was done by a professional.
22. Scissor Sharpener
What to do when you have blunt scissors? Most easy-to-use sharpening devices are designed for single-blade, not double-blades.
Grab some foil and use your scissors to cut them. Gradually you will see the cut become easier and edges getting smoother. What a quick and cheap way to revive your scissors.
23. Soap Cleaner
Soaps help you get clean. Yet, during the process, they accumulate dirt and get dirty. Those sticky gunks on a used soap bar can even spread bacteria.
An easy way to prevent dirt build-up is to put some foil underneath them. You will notice your bar looks fresher and stay clean longer.
24. Jewelry Polisher
To get sull jewelry sparkle again, you need to spend money in a jewelry shop to get them professionally polished. Or do you?
Get some foil and put them into the polishing liquid. Let the foil sit with the jewelry for some time. You will get back your brand new shining jewelry again.
25. Cover Your Paint Brush
When taking a break in the middle of a painting job, leaving the paintbrush on a rack will get the paints dried on it.
What not wrap foils around the bristles to avoid the headache. If it is cold, the foil also can prevent water-based paints from freezing up.
26. Adjust Garden Lights
You may want more light for a table in your garden or need to highlight an ornament at the curve of the path.
Aluminum foil is ideal for redistributing lights. Foil-covered cardboard can reflect light to where you need it and deflect light from spots that are too bright.
27. Cake Decoration
Many people slow down at the cake counter to appreciate their beautiful decorations. Baking cake at home is not hard, but to have as beautiful decorations can be challenging.
Be creative with the foils at hand. They are shiny and flexible– perfect for molding into small decors to dress up your home-baked cakes.
28. Safe Hair Curling
Want to have a headful of beautiful bouncing curls? To get nice curls you will need sufficient heat to treat your hair. But too much heat might cause hair damage.
You can provide sufficient heat without getting the temperature too high by putting layers of foil between your hair and the curling device.
29. Make Your Stylus
A pointed stylus is so much more precise than a finger on a screen. Plus it won’t make your screen dirty with all greasy fingerprints.
Wrap a small piece of foil around the tip of a sharp pencil or pen– you will have a stylus doing those precision works like sharpies.
30. Polish Your Chrome
Shining chrome does last long. It can get rusty and dull.
To restore the bright shine of chrome wares, crumple up a small ball of foil and rub the chrome ware with it. In minutes, you will get rid of rust and regain their sparks.
31. Oven Protector
Oven makes cooking large portion dishes so easy. Yet the cleaning afterward is a hard chore for many people.
Why not add foils to the rack of your oven? That will prevent the greasy gunk build-up and making cleaning as easy as throwing out the foil wrap.
32. Keep That Pie
Pie crust is easily deformed or crumbled if pulled out of the oven and cooled down too quickly.
Wrapping the cooked pie in foil will help the temperature drop much slower and prevent the crust from changing shape. You will end up with a nice-looking pie long after cooking.
33. Personal Cake Pan
You need to make a bunch of small cakes instead of a big one. Where to get all those small cake pans with different shapes?
A convenient way to do it is by folding foils into those small cake pans. Foils are very flexible– you can create whatever shapes and sizes you need.
34. Keep Leftovers Fresh
What to do with all those delicious leftovers after a big party? You don’t have enough top wares to store each dish separately.
Simple. Wrap your leftovers in foils to keep them fresh longer and prevent unwanted odor in the fridge.
35. Deter Garden Insects
How annoying to have those garden pests crawling on your flowers and vegetables. They can destroy your favorite plants if not controlled.
Putting down a layer of foils around the root of your plants can effectively deter garden insects. It has the added benefit of more lights for the plant.
36. Clean Fireplace
Fireplaces keep us warm and toasty in cold winters. Yet, the after-use cleaning can be a terrible messy chore.
Want to enjoy the fireplace without the hassle of cleaning up? Put layers of aluminum foils at their bottom. All the soots and ash can be easily removed with the foil after use.
37. Prolong The Life Steel Wool
Steel wools are handy for tough scrubbing jobs. But they get rusty easily.
If you remember to wrap steel wools in foils and store them in a freezer after each use, you will have a new ball of steel wool for a very long time.
38. No More Damp Sleeping Bags
Sleeping in a sleeping bag during camping can be an exciting experience. But the dampness seeping up from the campground can make it feel uncomfortable in the morning.
Putting a layer of foil underneath the sleeping bag can help you avoid this headache. You can now wake up dry.
39. Clean Roller Pan
The roller pan you used for painting last time is caked with dry paints. You get no choice but to buy a new one.
Before putting paints into the new pan, wrap it with layers of foils. Throw out the dirty foil after the job, and you can reuse your pan many times.
40. Preserve Paints
When you have a large painting job that takes days to finish, the opened can of paints may go bad before you complete the job due to air exposure.
Keeping a piece of foil inside of the paint can slow down the oxidation process since the foil will catch the oxygen first. Your paints now can last till you finish all the work.
