Coffee is a pretty amazing thing, besides providing the fuel for many of us to be functioning human beings in the morning – its usefulness goes above and beyond a quick pick me up.
Before throwing out the grounds from your next pot of coffee, keep them, dry them out (allow them to air dry, laying them on a paper towel) and read on to see the many uses of used coffee grounds.
1. Remove Cooking Odors From Your Hands And Surfaces
When preparing meals that have ingredients with any strong aromas – onions, garlic, and fish – your hands are often left smelling not as appealing as the meal your preparing.
Well, taking old coffee grounds and giving your hands a good scrub will help cut down the smells emanating from your hand, making your skin smooth as an added bonus.
You can also deodorize any cutting boards you’ve used by scrubbing it with coffee grounds and giving it a good rinse afterwards.
2. Use as a Deodorizer
Just like with a cutting board or your hands, you can also cut down on the odors in your refrigerator or freezer. Coffee grounds work in much the same way as baking soda, absorbing the multitude of smells swirling around your fridge or ice box while saving you from having to buy baking soda!
3. Keep Pests Out Of Your Garden While Nourishing It!
Another wonderful thing about old coffee grounds is that protect your garden from pests like ants, slugs, snails and even the neighbour’s cat who decided to make your garden it’s litter box.
The nutrients found in coffee grounds is also great for fertilizing plants that thrive on high acidity – tomatoes, carrots, roses, rhododendrons and azaleas will all flourish with a little java juice into their roots.
If your own cat is messing with the plants in your house, sprinkling a few coffee grounds around the base of the plant should keep your feline friends at bay…or have an over-caffeinated kitty climbing over your walls (Don’t put it past a cat – stranger things have happened).
4. De-Grease Pots and Pans
Using a combination of spent coffee grounds with a scouring pad is an excellent way to remove grease and stuck on messes without using too much elbow grease or resorting to harsh chemicals.
5. Homemade Wood Stain
Most store-bought wood stain contains really harsh chemicals that you may not want to put on your furniture or get on your skin. Luckily coffee grounds are a much more environmentally alternative to staining wood. While there might be some limitations to the actual coloration of the wood, it still works!
All you need to know to make your very own safe, organic and environmentally friendly alternative to wood stain can be found here.
6. Add Shine to Hair
Who would have thought that the contents of your percolator could also make your hair look better? Coffee grounds add shine and naturally condition your hair.
Work the grounds into clean, wet hair and massage it in for a few minutes. When rinsing the grounds out of your hair you may want to do it outside or with a strainer in the drain to prevent any clogs from the coffee grounds.
7. DIY Exfoliating Scrub
Besides making your hair look beautiful, coffee can make your skin look radiant too.
The recipe is simple as “two cream, two sugars” – all you need is:
- 2 tablespoons dried coffee grinds
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Mix the olive oil and the grinds together, rub the mixture on your skin in a circular motion and rinse with warm water!
Coffee – a deodorizer, a scourer, a pest repellent, a wood stain and a beauty product – there’s so much more to coffee to love!
