during thanksgiving, uses for that left over aluminum foil

yesterday I shared with you how to clean your space using minimal toxins after your holiday feast. As promised, I am going to fill you in on the many ways you can use (or re-use) that aluminum foil.

I favor aluminum foil to plastic wrap partially because I hate having to uncling the plastic wrap every five seconds, and partially because aluminum foil is less harmful to the environment, and has so so many other uses!

 First off, and this should be an obvious one, you can cook in aluminum foil, wrap a chicken breast or a potato in aluminum foil and you can toss it straight into your campfire!

you can use it to wrap up leftovers, or even regular sandwiches as I'm sure we've all seen TV moms doing.

here's one you may not know, you can use aluminum foil to soften your brick of brown sugar. Wrap your brick of brown sugar in aluminum foil, then pop it into the oven for five minutes at 300F. Soon you will have softened brown sugar for all of your baking needs.

you can use it as a pie crust protector. a small amount aluminum foil folded over the crust of a pie will keep the crust from browning and blackening and eventually falling off before the rest of the pie has cooked sufficiently

Oh boy oh boy do I love this one: You can protect your oven from spills by placing a few sections of aluminum foil beneath something that might bubble and trouble all over the floor of your oven. Don't place foil on the actual floor of the oven, as that could cause a build-up of heat and can warp the bottom of your expensive appliance. Instead, lay some foil over the rack just beneath whatever it is that might erupt and create a mess. Instead of scrubbing , you can just ball up the soiled foil and recycle it.

and whoopie!!! as a scrubber!, with a little bit of crumpled aluminum foil, I can scrub off tough messes. This works anywhere you might find yourself scrubbing unusually hard.

Polishing silver... (say what?!!) easily remove any oxidation residue with SCIENCE! (And aluminum foil.) Just lay some foil down in a shallow, flat pan. Pour in some hot water and add a dash of salt and baking soda (love it!). Plop your silver items into your dish, making sure that they're touching one another and resting on the foil. Watch the tarnish disappear! If your silver is no longer recognizable as silver, wait about five minutes. After their bath, run some cool water over your silver forks and spoons and gently buff them dry with a soft towel!

you can use aluminum foil to de-static and basically do what a dryer sheet does...though I do love the extra uses for dryer sheets. Just put a ball of aluminum foil in with your laundry and let it run, your laundry will be un-static-y and you will save roughly $2 in the difference between a box of foil and a box of dryer sheets.


you can speed up ironing time by placing aluminum foil on your ironing board which acts as a heat reflector basically cutting in half your ironing time

and of course protecting your brain from mind control!!! wasn't it the movie Signs where the entire family was wearing aluminum foil hats?  The government and super-advanced alien races (especially considering that they are probably in cahoots) shouldn't be able to read or control those thoughts. To combat telepathic control techniques that rely upon radio waves, you can fashion a protective helmet out of aluminum foil. Berkeley engineers have tested the wave-blocking power of aluminum foil and discovered that an aluminum foil deflector beanie actually magnifies extraneous signals beamed into a subject's head at certain frequencies. I dunno, it's probably propaganda.