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Aluminum foil can come in handy around the household for covering food and keeping heat in. But there are lots of other ways you can use aluminum foil around your home that have nothing to do with food.

Here are 45 mind-boggling ways to use aluminum that you’ll wish you knew so much sooner!

1. WiFi Booster


Aluminum foil can help give you a better WiFi signal. Fold a piece of foil into a rectangle shape that’s about 4″ by 6″ and bend the shiny part inwards into a curved shape. Place it behind your router. Learn more below.


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iwifirouter.com Source: iwifirouter.com

2. Heal Small Burns

Place the shiny side of a piece of aluminum foil onto your burn. Keep it covered for 15 to 20 minutes. The pain should be gone by the time you take your foil off.


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Healthmagazine365 Source: Healthmagazine365

3. Repel Garden Insects


Use aluminum foil to keep garden pests away. Cut up a few strips of aluminum foil and place it in your mulch. You can also place it at the base of plants and trees to get rid of mice, bugs, and squirrels. Use rocks to hold it down if you need to.

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Balcony Garden Web Source: Balcony Garden Web

4. Curl Your Hair


Forget the curlers. All you need for perfectly curled hair is some tin foil and a flat iron. Watch the video below for all the details.

5. Get Rid Of Rust


Aluminum foil works great to get rid of rust. Ball up a piece of foil and dip it in distilled vinegar. Use it to rub away rust.


6. Soften Brown Sugar


Use aluminum foil to de-clump brown sugar. Wrap up your solid chunks in foil. Place it in the oven for 5 minutes at 300 degrees to soften.


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Brainjet Source: Brainjet

7. Polish Silverware and Jewelry


Line a dish with aluminum foil and pour a cup of hot water in it. Mix in a tablespoon of salt and baking soda. Drop your discolored jewelry in and let it sit for 10 minutes before you rinse it off.



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Leaf Source: Leaf

8. DIY Dryer Sheets


Stop buying dryer sheets. Crumple up some aluminum foil into balls. Toss it into your dryer to soften up your clothes.

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Green Idea Reviews Source: Green Idea Reviews

9. Clean Your Grill


Cover your grill with aluminum foil while it’s still cool. Close the lid and heat up your grill for 15 to 20 minutes. Turn off the grill, bunch up your foil with tongs and scrub your grill racks.


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The Daily Adventure Source: The Daily Adventure

10. Makeover Your Furniture


Give your furniture a new look with aluminum foil. Just decoupage the foil to your furniture. Learn how here.


11. Sharpen Your Scissors


Use aluminum foil to sharpen up your scissors. Fold up several pieces of foil. Cut through with your scissors several times.

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Answers.com Source: Answers.com

12. Create A Funnel


This is great in a pinch if you don’t have a funnel. Fold over pieces of foil. Shape it into a funnel.


13. Strong Contact Paper


Protect cabinets and drawers with aluminum foil. Fold over foil and cut it to fit in your cabinets. Use it as a cabinet or drawer liner.



14. Turn AAA Into AA Batteries

Need some AA batteries but only have AAA? Place aluminum foil between your battery and the coil. This can work with other ill-fitting batteries too.



15. Protect a Doorknob


If you need to keep your doorknob from getting dirty or scratched during a move or while painting, you can put a bit of aluminum foil over it.

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Pinterest Source: Pinterest

16. DIY Piping Bag


You can fold the tin foil into a funnel shape and snip off the tip, then place it in a frosting bag for accurate frosting.

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Craftsy Source: Craftsy

17. Clean Cast Iron


Cast iron skillets can often rust easily but you’re not supposed to wash them with soap and water. Instead, you can use a rolled up ball of tin foil to scrub away the rust and dirt.

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Clean it In Cast Iron Source: Clean it In Cast Iron

18. Protect Pie Crust


If you’re making a tasty pie, but don’t want your crust to burn or fall off, you can wrap tin foil around the edge to keep from getting ruined.

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Instructables Source: Instructables

19. Cook Salmon

It might seem obvious that tin foil can be used to cook food but did you know tin foil actually works best for cooking salmon? You can make the tastiest salmon in foil pouches, which is when you carefully create a little pouch to cover the salmon so it cooks inside the tin foil.


20. Seal Your Food


If you want to keep things extra fresh, like a bag of chips or a bag of brown sugar, you can seal the bag using tin foil and an iron. It’s as simple as that!


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YouTube Source: YouTube

21. Keep Things Hot


If you’re trying to keep something warm for later, just put a little tin foil over the top and it’ll trap the heat right inside!

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Diethood Source: Diethood

22. Keep Soap From Disintegrating


If you’ve ever used a bar or soap in the kitchen or bathroom before, you know that they don’t always last very well. Instead of letting them disintegrate into a mushy mess, you can put a little tin foil underneath to protect it.

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Fine Art America Source: Fine Art America

23. Fix a pair of jeans


If you rip your jeans, you can iron on a patch or another piece of jean. But you need to put something between the inside of the jeans to keep the patch from sticking to the other side. Slip some tin foil in the pants before you iron the patch on!


24. Enhance Natural Light For Your Plants


If your plants are struggling to get natural light, you can line a shoe box with tin foil and then place the seedlings into the shoebox. The tin foil will then reflect it directly back onto the plants!


25. Make a DIY Cake Pan


You can use tin foil to shape a cake pan of your choice. If you have another cake pan, you can place your DIY pan inside of it for sturdiness.

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Fine Cooking Source: Fine Cooking

26. Lift Food Out Of A Pressure Cooker


It can be dangerous work pulling food out of a pressure cooker, but tin foil can keep your fingers and hands safe. You can create a sling to safely lift the food out of the cooker.

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This Old Gal Source: This Old Gal

27. Use It To Freeze Food


Rather than toss food into a freezer bag, you can wrap it tightly in tin foil. That will keep the flavor in and keep the freezer burn out.

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Favorite Freezer Foods Source: Favorite Freezer Foods

28. Keep Birds Away


If you have birds invading your fruits and plants, you can hand strips of tin foil near the plants and it should keep the birds at bay.

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Buyalltraps Source: Buyalltraps

29. Cook Eggs In A Breeze


If you don’t feel like getting fancy with your skillet, you can hack your breakfast using tin foil. There are various recipes for cooking eggs in tin foil that will give you delicious and easy eggs in the AM.

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Honest Cooking Source: Honest Cooking

30. Reheat Soggy Pizza


Don’t put your pizza in the microwave! Instead, pop it on a skillet on the stove at medium heat. You can create a dome out of tin foil that will help reheat the pizza perfectly.

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Huffington Post Source: Huffington Post

31. Avoid Messes In The Oven


If you’re cooking pizza directly on the rack or something that might bubble over, you can put tin foil on a sheet on the rack directly below the food you’re cooking.

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Aunt Peaches Source: Aunt Peaches

32. Move Heavy Furniture


If you are trying to move heavy furniture in a carpeted room, this hack is a great one. You can slide a little tin foil underneath each foot of the furniture and it should be much easier to slide around.


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Lifehacker Source: Lifehacker

33. Iron Your Clothes Easily


You can lay a piece of tin foil flat on your ironing board and then place your clothes on top. This cuts your ironing in half because having the foil on the other side will help iron both sides in one fell swoop.


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YouTube Source: YouTube

34. Cook Camp Food


You can cook food on the campfire easily by wrapping canned food in tin foil and tossing it right in the fire.


35. Keep Your Bananas Fresh For Longer


If you don’t want your bananas to brown in a day or two, you can keep them fresh for much longer by wrapping the top of the peel.

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YouTube Source: YouTube

36. Line your paint tray

Whether you’re painting the wall or painting a canvas, make clean up a breeze with this foil hack. Just line your paint tray with foil then pour the paint in. When you’re done, just crumple up the foil and toss in the trash!

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Tools-Paint Source: Tools-Paint

37. Make a tin foil stylus for your smartphone or tablet

Have you ever gone to draw something on your phone with your finger? It always ends up looking like a toddler did it. Help with creating precise drawings and notes by making a stylus with some tin foil wrapped around a pencil. So much more control!

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Gadget Source: Gadget

38. Hammered decor balls

Turn a crumpled up piece of tin foil into a shiny, beautiful decor object. They look beautiful displayed in a bowl on your coffee table! All you need to do is roll up a piece of tin foil into a size that’s slightly bigger than what you want the final product to be. Patiently hammer and compress the ball for approximately 20 minutes until all the folds and wrinkles have been smoothed out. Then, you’ll need to patiently polish it for about an hour.

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The Kids Should See This Source: The Kids Should See This

39. Pop popcorn

Pop popcorn on your stove top using some aluminum foil with this easy kitchen hack. Place a piece of foil in a skillet and pour in some popcorn kernels and some oil. Place another piece of foil on top and seal the edges. Turn on the heat and watch it pop! Remove from heat once there’s a few seconds between pops.

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Firewood For Life Source: Firewood For Life

40. Super-clean bakeware

If you have a cake pan or a cookie sheet that is dirty and covered in grime and grease, clean it with aluminum foil. Use the same process you would with cleaning your silver jewelry. You won’t believe how shiny and new they’ll look again. Head to Clean Mama for the tutorial.

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Clean Mama Source: Clean Mama

41. Up your photography game

You can use aluminum foil as a lighting reflector for staged photography. Just wrap a piece of foil over some cardboard and secure with binder clips. Use this to reflect light for beautiful, well-lit photos.

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Instructables Source: Instructables

42. Keep veggies crispy and fresh for longer

Have you ever purchased celery or lettuce and put it in your fridge only to see that it’s become limp and not-so-fresh in just a couple days? Keep your veggies fresh and crisp for longer by wrapping them with tin foil before placing in the fridge.

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Pinterest Source: Pinterest

43. Help ease pain

Did you know foil can help soothe and ease muscle and joint pain? According to Little Things, “This is because it supposedly regulates one’s body’s biological pathways, called meridians, that energy flows through. This soothes different areas in the body and helps alleviate pain and speed up healing times. The foil’s chemical elements help make this unique healing process happen — it seems to good to be true until you try it!”

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Vorply Source: Vorply

44. Hotel grilled cheese

If you’re staying in a motel or hotel, your options for cooking are pretty limited. But if you’re on a budget, you can make a super yummy grilled cheese using some foil and an iron (and the bread and cheese of course). Just build the sandwich and wrap in foil. Set a hot iron on top of it and wait for 10 minutes. Yummy!

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Instructables Source: Instructables

45. DIY emergency candle

Has the power gone out but you don’t have any flashlights or candles? Make one using an empty can, some oil, a piece of twine, and some foil. Just place some cooking oil inside the empty can and put a piece of foil on top. Cut a small slit on top of the foil and thread in some twine. Light it and you’re good to go!

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YouTube Source: YouTube


H/T: Shareably

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