5 REAL Uses For Coffee Grounds – I Tried Them Out!

There are multiple websites and tons of pins on Pinterest touting the many benefits of coffee grounds. Some work, some do not. For example, several sites say that used coffee grounds repel ants. Not the ones I saw crawling over the grounds I'd spread in my porch. I think I even saw one scoop some into a teeny weeny cup.

So for my benefit and yours, dear reader, I decided to wade through the mounds of “Uses For Used Coffee Grounds ” and let you know which practices are true which did and did not work, at least for me: 

 

1. Use To Scrub Pots And Pans - Yes, using a handful of grounds does substitute for toxic abrasive cleaners, BUT coffee grounds can also clog your sink!  If you're going to try this, do the scrubbing on a towel or some newspaper that you can clean without flushing the grounds down the sink.
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Use Coffee Grounds As A Household Deodorizer – Yes, you can place some in a jar or dish to absorb odors from refrigerators and freezers, BUT you can also put a bowl of them in a musty basement or garage to help with smells. And, they're great at the bottom of trash cans (especially in the bathroom) to get rid of those nasty odors!
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Plant Food – It's true that rosebushes, azaleas, rhododendrons, and evergreens love acidic soil. I collect my grounds in a used coffee can (of course) and sprinkle them around my rosebushes. They love the grounds and I love the roses! 
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Shoe Deodorizer – Junior's sneakers are an environmental hazard, so I grab a pair of old knee-high panty house, filled each sock with coffee grounds, and place them in each sneaker. Okay, so the odor doesn't fully disappear, but at least now I don't want to pass out each time I pass Junior's shoes.
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Use When Shopping For Perfume Or Cologne – The last time I went to Bed, Bath & Body Works, my daughter and I had a blast trying on new scents. Unfortunately, it was difficult to really get a sense (pun intended) of the new scent when the old one was still in the air and on our arms. I had packed a tablespoon of coffee grounds in a little Ziploc bag and we took a whiff of the coffee between fragrances. The coffee scent actually cleared our noses of the previous smell.

Coffee grounds are one of those substances I always look at and think, “they HAVE to have more uses than just for coffee” and they do. 

Some work, some don't, but if you drink coffee and you have the grounds around anyway, why not try some of the uses above? They worked for me!

Thanks for reading!

Note:  Photos are courtesy of Pixabay.