Hi all – Do you know there were more ways to use coffee grounds than just in the garden? It was news to me, and I hope you find it the same. From our guest blogger Michelle. Enjoy – Shane.
The Many Uses of Coffee Grounds
If you like to drink coffee, you have probably wondered what to do with the coffee grounds besides throw them into the trash. Coffee grounds actually can be used for other things besides filling up the trash can. Read on for 12 ideas for things to do with those coffee grounds.
Keep Out The Cats
If you have allergies, you know that cats can really cause problems. Instead of relying on your health insurance provider to handle the allergic reactions caused by stray cats, you might just want to try keeping the neighbourhood cats off your property all together. In order to keep cats away from your flower beds and your yard, you should sprinkle coffee grounds around the perimeter of your property.
Keep The Ants from Your Kitchen
Ants can travel all over very quickly. With how fast they travel and the number of problems that they can cause, you would think that they should carry car insurance! At any rate, the best way to deal with an ant problem is to prevent one from happening in the first place. Sprinkle coffee grounds outside the perimeter of your house in order to prevent ants from getting into your house.
Easter Egg Dye
Actually, coffee grounds can be used to dye a variety of things. If you are into paper crafting or scrapbooking, you may want to consider dyeing your craft paper using coffee grounds too. In order to dye either paper or eggs with coffee grounds, you will need to steep the grounds in very warm water. The best way to do this is to place some grounds in an old but clean piece of a t-shirt. Tie the piece off so that the grounds can not be dropped into the water. Then, let the coffee grounds steep for a while. If you want your paper or eggs to be a dark brown color, you may have to wait quite a while. For a light brown color, do not steep the coffee grounds that long.
Get Rid of Grease
You can easily scour out your pots and pans by using coffee grounds. Just add a little bit of the grounds and rub them into your pots and pans to get rid of grease and other hard to clean food particles. Then, rinse the grounds off the pots and the pans. Do not try this on non-stick pans as the coffee grounds can damage the finish.
Keep Down the Ashes
If you use a wood stove, coal stove, or fireplace during the winter months, you know how dusty things get when you clean out the ashes. Wet coffee grounds are a great way to help keep the dust to a minimum during the cleaning process. Simply dump wet grounds over the ashes before you begin to clean in order to keep the dust from spreading all over the room.
Deodorize and Refresh
You can use coffee grounds to deodorize your garbage disposal. Just toss the wet ground into the unit and let them sit. The grounds will help to mask any offensive odours.
Fertilize Your Plants
You can also sprinkle coffee grounds around your indoor plants. Not only will the grounds repel pests, but they will also help to fertilize the soil around your plants.
Use to Help Spread Seeds
If you are a gardener, you know how difficult it can be to spread or scatter small seeds like carrot seeds or radish seeds. To help with this, you can mix the small seeds into coffee grounds. Not only will this make the seeds easier to spread over the ground but it will also help to repel pests and fertilize the soil around the seeds.
Remove Strong Odours from Your Hands
It can be difficult to get the aroma of strong foods like onion and fish off your hands. If you are cooking with foods like this, you may want to rub some coffee grounds into your hands to remove the odour. After you have rubbed the grounds into your hands, you can just rinse the coffee grounds off.
Melt Ice
You can also use coffee grounds to melt ice on the walkways near your home during the winter time. Coffee grounds can also give much needed traction on slippery surfaces like driveways, sidewalks and front porches.
Minimize Smoke Odours
Keep coffee grounds in your ash trays and the grounds will help to mask the odours from spent cigarettes and cigars.
Facials
You can use coffee grounds for a facial. Just rub the grounds into your skin in order to ex foliate dead skin cells. Then, rinse the grounds off the skin.
As you can see, there are many things that you can do with your coffee grounds instead of filling up your trash can. Try the above suggestions and perhaps you may find that you have to increase your coffee intake in order to get the amount of grounds you need to fertilize your garden, keep away ants, or deodorize your kitchen!
First of all, NEVER put coffee grounds in your garbage disposal. It will clog it up and you’ll have an expensive plumber bill to fix this. Lemon juice or baking soda followed by white vinegar is a much better option, which can also help clear out any build of of soap or oil in your pipes.
Secondly, I’ve had really terrible experience with coffee grounds and ants.
I was drying coffee grounds in my garage one time and didn’t quite get it complete. Mold developed so rather than fill up the landfill, I dumped it out on my driveway, thinking it’s organic and the rain would carry it away.
Two things happened:
First a large number of small ants gathered to eat this and were trying to make their way under the garage door.
Secondly, I got got at least A HUNDRED or more flying ants that did come into the garage. It was WEIRD! I think the caffeine affected their central nervous system because the would fly around very fast and then suddenly drop to the ground and be still for a bit or writhe in the floor. I had to get my canister vac out to get them cleaned up. I sucked them out of the air or off the cement floor. Spent like 45 minutes and then was too exhausted to continue. Went in the house and came back later for about an hour to continue the job. And then again later.
Overall, I estimate I spent about 3 hours to clean the mess up.
Don’t ever think coffee grounds are a deterrent for ants.
🤢🤮
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Very good article. Going to try some of those tips.
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We are trying it as a deterrent to an invasion of ants on our bean vines. Thanks for sharing the other info. I’ll try some of them for sure! 🙂
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Thanks for these great ideas…..
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Happy to help Gloria.
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One more idea for the garden – coffee grounds can be used to grow mushrooms! The grounds are mostly cellulose, the material most fungi thrive on. Some people actually take advantage of the huge amount of commercial coffee grounds (such as Starbucks) to get free substrate to grow mushrooms on, either for sale or personal consumption. The most commonly used fungus for this project is the Oyster Mushroom, scientific name Pleurotus ostreatus. Look it up, it’s an awesome and delicious project!
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Very interesting! Thanks for sharing
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And thanks for stopping by.
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Wow!! Thanks so much for the info : ) We drink SO much coffee in our house, that I’m actually going to force EVERYONE in the family to use it! Also – I know you already mentioned using coffee grounds for “facials”, but, I’ve also heard of using it as a body scrub, and find it particularly refreshing when I use it during my morning showers…Thanks again : )
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Excellent work there Sarah – don’t let this opportunity pass the family by. Have not used grounds as a body scrub but keep hearing so much about it. Feel sorry for the coffee grounds that find their way to me!
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And a 13th way – you can feed it to cows and pigs! Used as a stock feed supplement back in the day.
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Nice one Charles. I had read about coffee grounds being used as a livestock feed, and a fairly heavy amount too.
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That’s quite a lot to do with coffee ground. Thanks for sharing this.
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Glad to have you here – we have coffee grounds for everything!
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I didn’t know they worked for facials. I might just have to give that a whirl! Thanks for the great list.
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No worries Jessi and thanks for stopping by.
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Some great ideas there Shane, love the tip about Easter Egg dye – I’ll be trying that next year!
Great post
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Please do Dave – and send me the photos would love to share them on the site.
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