14 Clever Uses for Coffee Filters You’ll Wish You Knew Sooner
You use coffee filters everyday to make your favourite morning brew, but they have lots of other uses around the house. Read on to find out how coffee filters can be used to clean your glasses, protect food in the microwave, and more!
Make an air freshener
Fill a coffee filter with baking soda, twist-tie it shut and you have just made an air freshener. Make several and tuck them into shoes, wardrobes, the fridge or wherever else they may be needed.
Don’t miss these other extraordinary uses for baking soda!
Filter cork crumbs from wine
Don’t let cork crumbs ruin your enjoyment of a good glass of wine. If your attempt at opening the bottles results in floating cork crumbs, just decant the wine through a coffee filter.
Find out how to open a bottle of wine without a corkscrew.
Clean your specs
Next time you clean your glasses, try using a coffee filter instead of a tissue. Good-quality coffee filters are made from 100 per cent virgin paper, so you can clean your glasses without leaving lint. You can also use them safely to polish mirrors, TV and computer monitor screens.
Cover food in the microwave
Coffee filters are microwave-safe. Use them to cover bowls or dishes to prevent splattering when cooking or baking in your microwave oven.
Follow these tips to avoid dangerous microwave mistakes.
Dusting
When you need to clean a computer monitor or TV screen, reach into your kitchen cupboard for a coffee filter. Thin, cloth-like paper filters are great at picking up fine dust particles, and one filter goes a long way. You can also use coffee filters for dusting knickknacks and other home accessories, while you’re at it. Add a spritz of cleaning solution and the coffee filter will catch even more dust and disinfect surfaces, too.
Check out more home items you should be cleaning more often.
Dirt stopper
Every spring, I spend a lot of time adorning my deck with flowers. I love every part of it: potting the seedlings, daily watering and relaxing in my lounge chair relishing their beauty. But there’s one thing that drove me nuts. I used to have trouble keeping the dirt from flowing out the bottom of my potted plants when I watered them. I tried using larger stones in the bottoms of the pots, but that didn’t completely solve the problem. The solution was to place a coffee filter at the bottom of the pot before filling with dirt. The coffee filter stops the dirt while still allowing the water to flow through and not waterlog the plant. Now I have solved one of my tiny pet peeves and can move on with my life! —Kevin Daniel, reader
Consider purchasing these air-cleaning plants for your home.
Empty coffee grounds into your garden
Rinse your coffee grounds out to remove extra acids—you can do this with the old filter to make things easier. Then mix with your soil in a flowerbed or garden! The grounds will add valuable nitrogen to the soil without altering the pH balance too much and without rotting. It’s one of the best waste items to use in your garden.
Check out these genius ways to bring your garden indoors.
They use everyday items to keep things clean
Don’t put off cleaning because you don’t have supplies. “You can clean windows without leaving streaks behind with the help of a coffee filter,” says Larry Patterson franchisee of the Glass Doctor in Dallas. “Coffee filters and old cotton T-shirts also work well to remove remaining lint left behind from dry cloths.” Another pro tip? If you wiped vertically outside, make sure to wipe horizontally inside. Then, you’ll know whether the missed spot is inside or outside.
Familiarize yourself with these cleaning tips that actually work!
Face oil blotting sheets
Coffee filters are great for using on your face to remove oil or for use on your skin. Coffee filters are way cheaper than blotting sheets and will work just as well because they made from nearly the same material. You can get extra crafty and cut up some coffee filters into squares to carry around in a tin so you have some in stock anywhere you go.
Pamper yourself with these homemade face mask recipes.
Dryer sheets
Doing laundry and throwing it in the dryer only to find you forgot to pick up dryer sheets is pretty frustrating. You can certainly forgo the dryer sheets but if static electricity drives you nuts you can fashion a makeshift dryer sheet out of a coffee filter, white vinegar and some essential oil.
Avoid the mistakes that shorten the life of your washer and dryer.
Clean cast iron
There are a lot of ways to clean cast iron skillets, like with coarse salt. You can also use a coffee filter to soak up any remaining moisture after washing it. The coffee filter will help prevent rusting.
Here’s what you shouldn’t be storing on your kitchen countertop.