Does anyone have any interesting uses for any household items other than their intended use?
I sometimes use a can opener on its side to crush ice, in a Baggie. Does that count?
A hot iron and newspaper gets wax out of carpet.
Easy Off oven cleaner makes a great engine degreaser.
Lighter fluid is great for cleaning off sticky goo. (like residue from a price tag)
I’m sure there are hundreds more…
Attatch your small, long haired dog to a hockey stick for dusting ceiling fan blades and under furniture.
Unflushed fecal matter makes an excellent grout repair.
In a pinch, a table can be used as a desktop. And vise versa.
Nail polish remover will remove superglue too.
A shotgun isn’t just good for killing birds; it can be used on people too!
I use my nutcracker to get the screw off of my big peppergrinder, when it needs refilled. It’s really handy. Saves the fingers.
Save all those little slivers of soap bars and put them in a fine mesh bag, like the kind onions come in. Stretches the clean that much more.
I take my used motor oil and use it as two-stroke oil for my leaf blower and lawn mower.
Toothpaste makes an excellent copper and brass polish.
Also…Used deep-fryer grease and automatic transmission fluid make excellent diesel fuel substitutes.
Doesn’t that f*** up your fuel lines?
I think that this thread really should go in MPSIMS, as there’s no factual question asked, and no one factual answer.
As for my contribution…forget all those little mesh bags for soap slivers. Just lather up a new AND and old bar, and stick them together. The soap sliver will adhere very nicely to the new soap bar. This takes no additional materials, and takes almost no additional time or effort.
Large quantities of vinegar in the wash will remove cat pee from clothes.
a spatula make excellent back scratchers.
You can slip an old sweat sock on your hand to dust venetian blinds.
www.wackyuses.com gives a bunch of these.
When you can’t get one end of the drawstring that has disappeared into the tube, pull the string out from the other end, tie it to a knitting needle, and feed the needle through the holes and the fabric tube. Then untie the string from the needle.
For the sweet tooth: Bosco’s Chocolate Syrup,
For former teenage delinquents & poppers fanatics: Reddi-Wip and
For those watching their weight:Dickinson’s Organic Fruit Spread
All can be used in both the kitchen and the bedroom.
Using Deep fryer grease as a diesel fuel, you need to pre-heat it with a heat exchanger operating off the radiator, as room temp. grease is too thick to pass through the fuel lines. Also, you must filter the grease down to one micron to prevent injector clogging.
Used motor oil in the two-stroke engines…doing it for years and no problems yet.
It’s a dessert topping!
It’s a floor wax!
It’s BOTH!
Ketchup works wonders on copper. I use it on the bottom of my pans all the time.
I once used a jewelry torch to turn all the stubby, half-burned candles sitting around my house into one giant, mother of all, candles.
Speaking of candle wax -and this isn’t really household but I’ll tell anyway- if you’re ever camping and having a hard time getting the fire going, wax shavings off a candle will help get the tinder going.
Sort of specialized, but I turned my food dehyderator into a small oven to bake old reel-to-reel master tapes. (Old master tapes have been known to get “the stick” which causes the tape to shread when played back. Baking them will fix the problem long enough to extract the tracks.)
When I was 12 or 13 I had a great big injury on my elbow from something or other and we were all out of bandages and stuff so my mother cut the wings off a (unused of course) sanitary pad and taped that to my elbow. Quite embarassing when some people realised it didn’t look like a bandage… 
You can wax your appliances with car wax.
Lemon Pledge is about the best option for lubing the slides on vinyl windows and doors, as most everything else is harmful to the vinyl and plastic.
No mess grilled cheese: make cheese sammich, wrap in foil and press with an iron. Something magical happens in that foil.
Vaseline is great on car/truck battery terminals to prevent corrosion.
Toothpaste is an all around good mild abrasive.
Depending on the neighborhood, appliances make excellent lawn or porch decorations. Paint stirrers make good window props.
The Bass-O-Matic has uses beyond the walls of the house, as does the Galactic Profilactic.
In Camp Fire Girls, we made firestarters from old candles. Take an empty, clean tuna fish can, cut cardboard to the height of the can, roll cardboard to fit inside the can. Melt old wax and pour it into the can. Light and stick in a bunch of wood. Or, take the cardboard egg containers, fill the individual egg compartments with cardboard, pour melted leftover wax in the cups, being very careful not to overfill them. Cut or tear apart. Light one corner, and stick in the pile of wood or charcoal briquets. Both types of firestarters can be used in a home fireplace or in the backyard grill. You CAN use paraffin wax (sold as a canning supply) but that’s really quite expensive.
While we’re talking about melting wax, all the safety experts say to always use a double burner. We always used an empty coffee can set in a pot of water. Wax AND WAX VAPOR is extremely flammable, so don’t leave it unattended for even a moment.
[aside] When I was in the Camp Fire Girls, and for some time afterwards, I used to be able to build a camp fire and light it with only one match, if the wood was even somewhat dry. I still remember how I did it, but I haven’t had occasion to do it for some time. But this was a matter of some pride for me, because when everyone else had tried and failed (including our leader), they always said “Let’s get (my first name*) to do it, she can ALWAYS get a fire going.” Since I was something of an outsider even in such a small group, it was good to have an essential skill.
*Lynn is my middle name, and I went by my rather unusual and much-despised first name back then.[/aside]
When I have burned down a large scented candle, but I have bits of it left over, I chop up the bits. Then I take one of those cheap emergency candles and stick it into a jelly or mushroom jar (yes, I wash and reuse the glass jars that my food comes in, I’ve already paid for them, haven’t I?). I pile the chopped scented wax around the cheap candle, and light the candle. The scent is not as strong, but it is usually quite noticeable, and good enough to give a little lift to a regular evening. The mushroom jars work the best, as they are rather small in diameter and just slightly shorter than one of those cheap candles. This method saves me the trouble and mess of melting down the leftover wax.