21 Aluminum Foil Hacks You Didn’t Know You Needed

Sharpen Scissors

If you have a pair of scissors that barely cut any more or are rusty, just cut into a piece of aluminum foil 7-10 times to sharpen and clean them.

Sharpen Scissors

Make Your Batteries Last

If your batteries are dead and you have no replacements, you can use little balls of aluminum foil to get them to work. Just place them on the end of the batteries in an alternating pattern, as shown in the image.

Batteries

Get Rid Of Static On Your Clothes

Just throw in a ball of aluminum foil into your dryer to dry your clothes faster and get rid of static.

Remove Static

Clean An Iron

Use a ball of aluminum foil to clean the bottom of your iron and make it look brand new.

Clean Iron

Make Your Silverware Shine

Place aluminum foil at the bottom of a container or your sink, add baking soda, salt, boiling water and then soak the silverware until they look clean.

Clean Silverware

Move Furniture On Carpet

Place a piece of aluminum foil underneath the legs of the furniture you want to move. This way you’ll be able to slide the furniture easily on carpeting.

Move Furniture

Improve Your WiFi Signal

To get a better WiFi signal, all you need to do it fold a big piece of aluminum foil and place it behind the modem as if it were a screen.

WiFi Extender

Clean Your Glue Gun

With a ball of aluminum foil, you can clean the outside of your glue gun. Start with the glue gun still warm (protect your hands) and rub the aluminum foil ball on it to remove the excess glue stuck to it.

Glue Gun

Keep Your Food From Sticking To The Pan

Put a piece of aluminum foil on the bottom of the pan you want to use before putting in the food. This will help prevent the food from sticking to the pan.

Protect Food When Cooking

Clean Chrome Surfaces From Rust

Since aluminum foil is a softer metal than chrome, you can use it to bring back a shine to chrome surfaces and clean off the rust. Simply make a ball out of the aluminum foil and scrub the chrome with it.

Chrome

Re-Seal Plastic Bags

All you need to do is place a long piece of aluminum foil at the top of the plastic bag, fold it over the edge of the bag, as shown in the image, and iron it shut.

Seal Plastic Bag

DIY Touchscreen Pen

You can use aluminum foil to create your own touch screen pen. All you need is a small piece of aluminum foil, a pen or pencil, and tape. Wrap the end of the pen or pencil in the aluminum foil and secure it with a piece of tape. In the winter you can make your regular gloves work with your touchscreen too by putting a small piece of aluminum foil on the tip of the fingers.

DIY Touchscreen Pen

Homemade Cookie Cutters

Take a piece of aluminum foil, fold it horizontally multiple times to create a thicker long strip and mold it to the shape you want.

Cookie Cutters

Dispose Of Your Cooking Grease

After having cooked very greasy food, you can just line a bowl with aluminum foil, pour in the excess oil, and wrap it into a ball to throw it out with no mess.

Throw Out Grease

Keep Your Oven Clean

If you want to avoid cleaning your oven constantly, this hack is for you. Simply place a layer of aluminum foil on the bottom of your oven, and on the inside of the door. This way you’ll be able to avoid having burned food as the foil helps distribute the heat more evenly.

Clean Oven

Protect You Doorknobs When Painting

When painting a room that has a doorknob, all you need to do is cover the doorknob with a layer of aluminum foil to protect it from paint splatters. Just secure the foil in place with some tape.

Doorknob

Put A Crumpled Ball Of Aluminum Foil In Your Dryer

Aluminum foil can work magic in your dryer. All you need to do is roll a sheet into a small ball, throw it in, and this will reduce static electricity and keep your clothes looking fresh and crisp in no time. Your clothing will stay soft and this is a great alternative to dryer sheets or fabric softener to help save you money!

Put A Crumpled Ball Of Aluminum Foil In Your Dryer

Wrap Your Key Fob In Foil

Inside your car key fob, there’s a tiny computer chip which is programmed with a unique code that it sends to your car’s security system. To respond to it, the car has a chip of its own which uses the same algorithm to generate codes. Simply put, if the codes match, the car opens. While this is all well and good, the convenience comes at a price: if someone hacks into your car key fob and figures out the code, they can easily take your car. To prevent exactly this, there are a few little tricks you can use. The one we’ll focus on is wrapping your key fob in foil. No, this isn’t some wacky conspiracy theory. Wrapping the fob in foil will prevent hackers from stealing its signal. If you don’t want to walk around with a foil-wrapped key, you can use a small box and line it with foil to store the key in.

Wrap Your Key Fob In Foil

Clean A Barbecue Grill

Another great aluminum foil hack is cleaning your grill with a ball of aluminum foil. It will remove the grease and stains very well.

Cleaning Barbecue Grill

Easy Curls

A low-heat way to curl your hair is to use a piece of aluminum foil in between your iron and hair. This will protect your hair from too much heat from the iron and leave you with the perfect curl.

Curl Hair

Avoiding Melted Ice-Cream Disasters

You’ve got to love kids and their cute little tendencies. Ice-cream is one of their favorites, and it’s easy to understand why. But for parents, a kid and an ice-cream can be quite a nightmare. All that mess can turn a house into a cream-covered canvas. Try this – wrap the bottom of the ice-cream with aluminum foil and let those droppings fall into a neat little ‘cup’.

Avoiding Melted Ice Cream Disasters

Keeping Bananas Fresh for Longer

Bananas are great for so many different things, like baking, adding to smoothies, and of course getting your fix of potassium. But the problem is that they can go from green to yellow faster than you can say pepperoni pizza! So, we suggest that you wrap the ends of the stalks with aluminum foil since it prevents them from rotting. This is because they don’t get contact with air which is what causes decay.

Keeping Bananas Fresh For Longer

Avoid Welcoming Cockroaches into Your Kitchen

We all know that kitchen cabinets are for food products and kitchenware. They most certainly are not designed for creepy-crawlies like cockroaches and other bugs. The problem is that those dark corners are quite inviting to these little critters. That is unless you put aluminum foil down on the surface of the cabinets which reflects light into all the dark areas.

Avoid Welcoming Cockroaches Into Your Kitchen

Low-Cost Boost to Radiator Efficiency

Man, when it is cold, there’s nothing better than walking through the front door into a warm house. But what happens when the radiator isn’t working so well anymore and you walk into a freezer-like house? You freeze! You can cover some cardboard with aluminum foil and place it around the radiator. The foil will help boost the heat in the house.

Low-Cost Boost To Radiator Efficiency

Cutting Out the Mess in BBQs

We’ve mentioned cleaning up the grill after a great barbecue, but what we haven’t mentioned is how aluminum foil can come in handy during a BBQ. You can wrap your meat, chicken, fish, or vegetables in aluminum foil and save yourself the headache of having to clean up the dripping mess of the food. This is also a great way to savor all the flavor of the grilled food.

Cutting Out The Mess In BBQs

Making Old Mirrors Bright Again

Mirrors aren’t just for looking out ourselves in, they’re also great additions to rooms in order to make them look larger than they really are. Sometimes the corners of these mirrors can lose their shine, and they become tacky-looking. A simple hack for this is to neatly fold a piece of aluminum foil to the corners.

Making Old Mirrors Bright Again

Insect Protection with Enhanced Plant Growth

If you’re anything like me then you’ll know just how wonderful it is to plant in your own garden. On the flipside, it’s heart-breaking when insects have a munching fest on your prized plants. A cool trick is to surround the base of your plants with aluminum foil. This will reflect light on the plants and deter wanna-be pests.

Insect Protection With Enhanced Plant Growth

A Helping Hand for Santa

Okay, we can’t actually guarantee that you’ll have Santa Claus coming down your chimney. That would be really cool, by the way. What we’re talking about is creating a layer of aluminum foil that you can put down at the base of your fireplace so that you can easily remove the soot and ashes from your home’s heating hub. It’s amazing how much heat aluminum foil can withstand.

A Helping Hand For Santa

A few layers of foil will allow you to create a temporary platform that you can remove and chuck in the garbage whenever it is necessary.

Patching Clothes without Ruining Your Ironing Board

For most people, ironing clothing isn’t too complicated. But what are you supposed to do when you have a pair of ripped jeans? The hole there makes it extremely difficult to prevent the iron from sticking to the ironing board. All you actually need is a sheet of aluminum foil to go under the hole and between the iron and board.

Patching Clothes Without Ruining Your Ironing Board

Create Sunshine Heaven for your Plants

Not all plants can be easily moved from one area in your garden to another in order to get more sunlight. In a case like this, you can help the photosynthesis process along by creating a sort of sunbed. Grab a box, remove one side, cover the others with aluminum foil and put this makeshift box around your plants. The silver reflection will make sure all light reflects directly on your plants.

Create Sunshine Heaven For Your Plants

Bring the Fish In With Added Light

This one might seem strange at first, but once you try it, you’ll never go back. It’s a known fact that fish are attracted to things that are shiny. So when you go fishing next, attach a bulb of aluminum foil to the end of your bait and expect to come home with a big catch!

Bring The Fish In With Added Light

A Painter’s Trusty Friend

Do you know how frustrating it is to lose the lid of a Tupperware container? Of course you do, we all do. So it’s the same frustration for painters when they lose the top of their paint can. The result is the oxidation of the paint which means it gets a hard crusty layer which is unusable and hard to remove. By putting a thick layer of aluminum foil over the top, you’ll prevent this drying up from occurring.

A Painter’s Trusty Friend

Remedy for Vinyl Tile Hassle

Bathroom tiles, usually the vinyl kind, will get loose as time goes on. Instead of spending a fortune of replacing them, try this really easy and handy trick. Place a layer of tinfoil under the tiles, and then bring your iron. Heat it up and place it over the tiles. This will cause the aluminum to heat up and remelt the glue under the tiles, ensuring that it sticks as it should.

Remedy For Vinyl Tile Hassle

A Protective Credit Card Cover

Technology is advancing so fast, it’s incredible! Nowadays you don’t even need to swipe your credit card anymore. You can simply tap it to the machine with this new RFID technology. But what about those times you don’t intend on tapping it but get charged anyway? Well, you can make yourself a kind of pouch from aluminum foil which will prevent this from happening. Say goodbye to unintentional purchases.

A Protective Credit Card Cover

Getting the Light Right

It can be really frustrating when you’re an amateur photographer trying to get good light for a photoshoot. We don’t all have fancy flashes and lighting reflectors. However, we do have aluminum foil, and in this case, that’s all we need. Just wrap some cardboard with this silver miracle worker and voila! You’ve got a reflector.

Getting The Light Right

Keeping Matchsticks Dry

What’s the best thing you can possibly do after setting up your tents at a campsite after a grueling day of hiking? That’s right – starting a campfire. The only issue is that sometimes the matches you brought along with you are wet from hiking through water. Your solution to this problem? Wrap your matches in aluminum foil and you’ll be good to go. Dry as a desert.

Keeping Matchsticks Dry

Soap Trick

Although I’m a great ambassador of liquid soap as oppose to bar soap, I still feel it’s necessary to mention this brilliant hack. Soap bars tend to get grimy, especially when they’re left sitting in a puddle. You can put a strip of aluminum foil underneath it and be grateful when it absorbs the grossness that sits under the soap.

Soap Trick

Putting the Sparkle Back into your Jewelry

Before we get started, let me just say that you should NOT scrub your jewelry with aluminum foil. Instead, grab a bowl and fill it with water, then add some soap, and a strip of aluminum foil. This combination will make your jewelry shine bright… like a diamond!

Putting The Sparkle Back Into Your Jewelry

Antifreeze Paintbrush Covers

For anyone who has ever painted an entire house, you’d know that it’s a job you should normally do with lots of breaks. The problem you could run into when doing this is having a dried out paintbrush that’s covered in hard paint. All you need to do is cover the brush with aluminum foil and when you come back, it will be moist as ever.

Antifreeze Paintbrush Covers

Perfect Pie Crusts

Baking is not always a piece of cake… sorry about that, the joke was irresistible! When you’re baking pies, ensuring that the shape of the pie stays intact is quite a challenge. As soon as you pull it out the oven, you could use aluminum foil to recreate the shape of the pie as you wanted it.

Perfect Pie Crusts

Preserving Steel Wool for Longer

Steel wool is one of those great inventions that is overlooked by many, quite like aluminum foil. Oftentimes steel wool becomes unusable and you have to throw it out. But what if we told you that there was a way to prolong its lifespan? All you need to do is wrap it in tinfoil and leave it in the freezer.

Preserving Steel Wool For Longer

Keeping Out Excess Moisture from your Sleeping Bag

Here’s another camping trick that you can add to your hack toolbox. It happens quite often that when you wake up in the morning after a night of sleeping in the wild, the bottom of your sleeping back is wet from the morning dew. You can prevent this by putting a “mat” of aluminum foil between your sleeping bag and the base of the tent.

Keeping Out Excess Moisture From Your Sleeping Bag

Roller Pan Liners

Are you looking to save yourself time and money? Of course you are. So when you’re painting next and you’re considering buying another disposable plastic liner for your paintbrushes, remember that we have a solution for you. You can use aluminum foil as your pan. It’s cheap and easy.

Roller Pan Liners

Ad-hoc Baking Platter

Pinterest is filled with excellent ideas – especially when it comes to anything related to what you could do in the kitchen. The problem is that many times there are baking ideas that require dishes of a certain size, and if you don’t have those sized dishes, you’re left with nothing. All you need is cardboard, tinfoil and some basic cutting skills. You can create the size and shape of your ideal baking platter.

Ad Hoc Baking Platter

Improve Outdoor Lighting

Lighting up your porch or balcony can be quite tricky if you don’t have too many lights. What you can do is create some aluminum foil decorations and hang them near your lights. This will create reflections of the light and provide you with a much-better lit outdoor experience.

Improve Outdoor Lighting

Line Your Paint Tray With Aluminum Foil

Line your paint tray with aluminum foil for a guaranteed easy cleanup; all you have to do when you’re finished painting is take the foil off of the tray and dispose of it, then you’re good to go!

Line Your Paint Tray

Put Aluminum Foil In A Cup To Catch Grease

Not sure how to get rid of that extra cooking grease? Here’s a trick! Put aluminum foil in a cup, fill the cup with the grease, let it dry, and toss the foil in the trash. It’s simple and mess-free, what more could you ask for?

Grease Cup

Wrap Up Your Celery

Want your celery to have a longer shelf life? Wrap it up in aluminum foil and watch, it will stay fresh for up to four weeks! No more stressing about eating your veggies before they go bad; with this trick, your celery will stay fresh for much longer.

Wrap Your Celery

Hang Strips Of Foil To Keep Birds Away

There’s nothing worse than going to bite into freshly picked fruit and realizing another creature got to it first. Hanging strips of aluminum foil from your tree branches is a quick and easy fix to keep those pesky birds away from the fruit you’re trying to grow!

Hang Strips Of Foil To Keep Birds Away

Use Foil For Crafts

Aluminum foil is a great material to give to your children for craft time; you can mold it and fold it into any shape you want, and it can even be placed on top of things like wrapping paper!

Use Foil For Crafts

Use Aluminum Foil As A Frying Pan

Stuck without a pan while you’re trying to cook dinner? Perhaps you’re at a campsite and are left with limited resources. Have no fear, aluminum foil can be placed on top of a stove or campfire to cook your food. It will taste just as delicious and you’ll have even less to clean up.

Use Aluminum Foil As A Frying Pan

Make Your Cake Look Extra Unique

Aluminum foil can easily be molded into different shapes, which could come in handy while baking a cake. Why spend all of your money on a heart-shaped cake from a bakery when you can make one yourself with a tin foil mold? Save time and money, and let’s be honest, homemade always tastes better.

Make Your Cake Look Extra Unique

Bring Your Brown Sugar Back To Life

Ever gone to get a scoop of brown sugar and it’s been hard as a rock? Here’s a tip: wrap it in aluminum foil and heat it up in the oven for five minutes at 300 degrees Fahrenheit (or 150 degrees Celcius). You’ll be amazed when you see your brown sugar is as good as new.

Bring Your Brown Sugar Back To Life

Keep Bread Warm

Have you ever baked bread and by the time you want to eat it, it’s cold? Use this trick! All you have to do is wrap your bread in aluminum foil to keep it warm and soft while you’re waiting to eat it. Once you unwrap the bread, it’ll taste like it just came out of the oven.

Keep Bread Warm

Use Foil To Clean Your Dishes

Sick of using that dirty sponge to scrub off stuck-on food? All you have to do is crumple up a piece of aluminum foil into a ball, put some dish soap on it, and scrub away. It’s more sanitary than using a sponge because you’ll be able to toss it into the trash when you’re finished, and it works even better because of the rough material the edges create. Give it a try on those tough messes!

Use Foil To Clean Your Dishes

Protect Your Baby’s Mattress

Accidents happen with every child, but with this simple trick they can be much less stressful on your life. Simply place aluminum foil across the whole mattress, cover it with a towel, and place the mattress pad and sheets back on the bed. You may still have to do some laundry with any accidents, but at least you won’t have to buy a new mattress.

Protect Your Baby’s Mattress

Spice Up Your Picture Frame

Want a unique way to decorate your home? Try putting aluminum foil around the edges of your picture frames. With the way it can crumble and form new shapes, it’s sure to bring a new look to your home. You can also decorate the foil after you’ve glued it onto the frame for added fun.

Spice Up Your Picture Frame

Save The Trees

Tired of small animals feeding off of your tree trunks? It’s common for animals like rabbits or mice to eat tree bark, especially during the winter months. An easy and cost-effective way to avoid this is by wrapping aluminum foil along the bottom half of the tree trunk.

Save The Trees

Heal Your Burns

This trick is proven to work in mysterious ways… If you’ve accidentally burnt yourself on something like a hot pan or your hair curler, wrap the burnt area in aluminum foil. All you have to do is place the shiny side of the foil on the affected area, wrap it around, and wait 20 minutes. Take off the foil and see your pain magically gone!

Heal Your Burns

Re-seal Vinyl Floors

Did a piece of tile come unglued from your floor? Have no fear, aluminum foil is here! Here’s how to fix it: place the tile back onto the floor and place a piece of aluminum foil on top. After that, run your clothes iron over the area for a minute or until you can feel the glue reattaching to the floor. After you’ve done this, place something heavy like a few books or a chair on top of the tile until you feel the glue has had time to dry. Voila, your tile is good as new!

Re-seal Vinyl Floors

Bring Your Own Cupcake (Carrier)

Promised you’d bring cupcakes to a potluck but don’t want to forget to bring your reuseable container home afterward? Simply mold each cupcake into a bed of foil one-by-one and layer the foil a few times. Doing so will create a sturdy, one-time use carrier that you don’t have to worry about forgetting at the party.

Bring Your Own Cupcake (Carrier)

Grow Your Seeds

In order to give your seeds the best chance to grow, try aluminum foil! Line a shoe box or other sturdy material with foil (placing the shiny side up). Poke some holes in both the box and the foil so that moisture can still get in and out through the soil. Plant the seeds and watch your new plants come to life! This will work because the inside of the box with the foil will absorb heat to keep moisture in, amd the foil also will reflect light onto the seeds.

Grow Your Seeds

Don’t Dye Your Glasses

Want to dye your hair but don’t want to be bored while the color is soaking in? We feel your pain! Here’s all you have to do to avoid ruining your expensive glasses: Wrap the arms of your glasses in aluminum foil, and just pull it off after your hair is done. With this trick you’ll be able to read a book or watch TV while your hair is being dyed and you won’t ruin your glasses!

Don’t Dye Your Glasses

Build Your Own Panini Press

This one is super simple. Just wrap your sandwich in aluminum foil and place it between two cookie sheets. After you have that, wrap a brick in aluminum foil (trust us) and put it on top of the cookie sheet. Put everything in the oven for a few minutes and you’ll see that you have a delicious panini.

Build Your Own Panini Press

Easily Store Leftovers

Sick of wasting food because you don’t have containers, or even worse, sick of having to wash said containers all the time? Now all you have to do is wrap your leftover food right into the aluminum foil and place it into the refrigerator or freezer. Just like that, you aren’t wasting food and you aren’t stuck doing all of the dishes! Seems like a win-win situation.

Easily Store Leftovers

Wrap Your Dog’s Collar

Tired of hearing your dog’s collar jingling every time he’s running around the house, but know you shouldn’t take the collar off? Try wrapping a small piece of aluminum foil around the key ring on his name tag so the two pieces of metal aren’t hitting against each other!

Wrap Your Dog’s Collar

Use As A Disposable Piping Bag

Nothing tastes better than frosting on cupcakes or cookies, and now you have an easy trick to frosting your desserts! Create a piping bag simply by wrapping up some foil and spooning the frosting into it. Then you’ll squeeze the frosting onto the treats and dispose of the foil once you’re finished.

Use As A Disposable Piping Bag

Cook the Perfect Piece of Salmon

Ever craved a piece of salmon but didn’t cook it properly? Now you know, all you have to do to get a perfectly moist and flaky piece of salmon is wrap it in aluminum foil before cooking it. This ensures that everything is cooked evenly so it tastes perfect.

Cook The Perfect Piece of Salmon

Clean Your Hot Glue Gun

We all know the struggle of using a hot glue gun but not being able to get the stuck-on glue off afterwards. Here’s a trick: heat up the glue gun and take a ball of aluminum foil to place around the glue gun. Use it almost like a napkin, except nothing will stick to the hot gun; instead, the foil will be able to pull the stubborn glue off.

Clean Your Hot Glue Gun

Keep Your Chips Fresh

Can’t finish an entire bag of chips in one sitting but don’t have a clip to use? Try this: place a strip of aluminum foil over the top of the bag. If you don’t have an iron, scrunch it all together to seal the bag. For added freshness protection, fold the foil neatly and use an iron to seal the bag closed!

Keep Your Chips Fresh

At home Teeth Whitening

Combine baking soda and toothpaste, place them on a strip of aluminum foil. Put the strip on your teeth, molding them to their exact shape to keep them in place. Keep on for an hour, then remove and rinse your mouth with water.

Whiten Teeth