5 Creative Uses for: Aluminum Foil

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

I have good aluminum foil intentions: I try hard to use a sheet for more than one sandwich. But no matter how careful I am, it ends up shredding. I might as well carry my lunch around in a doily. Luckily, AltUse.com has a few ideas for using unpristine foil:

1. Soften fabric: Create a ball of aluminum foil about the size of a baseball. Place it in your clothes dryer and with laundry. Use again and again.

2. Sharpen scissors: Layer foil and cut through the pile to sharpen your scissors. Six to eight layers of foil should do the trick.

3. Moisten brown sugar: Wrap a chunk of brown sugar in a sheet of aluminum foil and heat in a 300 degree oven for 5 minutes.

4. Iron fast: Place a sheet of aluminum foil under your ironing board cover to help transfer the heat to the items you are ironing and quicken your work.

5. Increase radiator efficiency: Use heavy-duty aluminum foil, tape to cardboard with foil’s shiny side facing out, and place behind a cast-iron radiator. Instead of being absorbed by the wall behind the radiator, the heat will reflect off the foil and move back into the room.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate