19 Creative Uses for Salt ...

This is one of the more common ways to use salt. It is often mixed with grit sand on the roads so that the road has a little more traction for the rubber tires to grab on to. The salt lowers the freezing point of water so that it has to be a lot colder for it to freeze or refreeze again. If you want to use salt to thaw ice on your drive/pathway, use crystals or even better, dishwasher salt. (table salt is pretty ineffectual.)

Table salt, the stuff you put on your dinner, is made from metallic elements. When microwaves hit the metal, they heat it up very quickly. Put the metal in your meal, such as salt, and the salt heats up quickly, which heats up the things around it, ergo your salty meal is heated up a lot faster.

Despite what you may have been told in school, adding salt to water does not decrease the boiling point. It actually increases the boiling point. You are making a “relatively” pure solvent impure, which, without going into details, will make the boiling point rise and the freezing point lower. For those that want to check it out, the equation is ΔTb = Kb • bB. As a result of increasing the boiling point you are able to cook food a little faster because the water is able to get a little hotter.

You are having dinner and the pie has spilled over on the bottom of the oven. You don’t have time to clean it, plus the oven is very hot, so pour a little salt on the spill. This is one of many great ways to use salt because it absorbs the moisture and hardens into a nasty scab. When it has cooled, it will chip off easily and the remaining stain will be a lot easier to clean.

The weeds that are poking up between the edges of your paving slabs are pretty tough if they have survived there. To stop them you need to wait for a sunny day, pull the weeds and sprinkle salt in the cracks. The ground becomes salted and any plant life will find it very difficult to grow there.

Using a cleaning product when cleaning your fridge is just asking for trouble because the food will absorb any smells over time. A saltwater solution is far better, especially if you make sure the area is all nice and dry before you put your food back in.

People get sticky spots on their iron because they have ironed man-made fibers and they have melted. One of the uses for salt is to sprinkle some on a piece of paper and iron over the salt. The heat and chemical bonding helps to remove the stickiness.

If your sponges are getting a little grubby, you can throw them in the washing machine, or you can soak them in salt water overnight. Both methods will free up some of the slime on your sponges.

Rinse them off once or twice, put a bit of water in a pan, put in some salt and stir it around. Put in the cabbage or broccoli and swish it around a little while to make sure it is completely saturated. Remove it and rinse it down and the salt will carry away the remaining dirt.

Apparently, if you soak a new toothbrush overnight in salted water it will last longer. Just remember to give it a good rinse before you use it for the first time.

It may have something to do with the type of sink you have, but some people claim that a saltwater mixture gets the greasy residue off your sink. It could be worth a shot.

If you are plagued by ants, sprinkle salt around entrances, window sills and any other place ants might be able to get in. Ants don’t like salt.

Had some scummy water in your vase for a while? One of the ways to use salt is to sprinkle some on a very wet cloth and wipe out the scummy area. Be careful not to do this with delicate glass or the glass may lose its luster. Do not try this with your fish tank because more often than not the fish will die.

Salt is a much better option than water in the case of minor fires associated with food. If you use water on a grease fire, it will spatter burning grease, whereas dumping salt on it reduces the temperature and also forms a crust which excludes oxygen, thereby not allowing the flames to breathe. Salt is also great to use on a barbecue. If your food is spitting fat and making the coals flare up, use salt to cool the flames, without cooling the coals.

This is one of the ways to use salt I can vouch for. If you’ve got tea and coffee stains in your mugs and cups, mix ½ teaspoon of salt with 1 teaspoon of dishwashing soap and gently scrub.

Do you still like to dry your laundry outdoors even in winter? No-one likes bras and knickers like cardboard or stiff jumpers. If you add salt to the final rinse it will stop your clothes from freezing on the line.

Sweaty pit marks on your favorite clothes? Fret ye not. Make a mix of 1 tablespoon of salt per quart of hot water, and use it on a sponge to get rid of the stains.

Make a paste from water, cream of tartar and salt. Rub it onto the rust patch and leave. When it’s dried, brush it off and buff the area with a soft, dry cloth. If you don’t have cream of tartar, make a paste of lemon juice and salt, without the water. Follow the same procedure.

This may not be the most typical uses for salt, but it is long established that salt offers protection from ghosts and spirits. The truth is that the idea is very, very old. Moisture was a big problem in days of old, when drying something in certain parts of the country was almost impossible. At night by the fire, people would see fumes and moisture rising up from areas in their house. Under candlelight and fire light, these fumes were mistaken for ghostly shadows and spirits. Salt actually absorbs water; if you leave some in your bathroom after a shower, it will collect some of the water in the air. People put down the salt believing that it was stopping spirits from awakening, when all it was doing was stopping fumes and moisture from rising upwards. If you believe in spirits – by all mean sprinkle salt!

How many of these uses for salt did you already know? Do you have any other ways to use salt to share?