While there are many uses for your dishwasher, we don’t recommend it for giving your cat a bath. Photo by Flickr user Dan4th Nicholas.
Each appliance in your kitchen has its own function it was created for. Refrigerators keep your food cold, microwaves reheat meals, and dishwashers clean your dishes. However, there are so many additional uses for these appliances and more that you might not have guessed.
Click through to check out some of these little-known tricks.
Coffee Maker
Are you on vacation, and all your hotel room has in the ways of food preparation is a mini fridge, microwave, and coffee maker? Don’t fret. If, for whatever reason, you find yourself craving cooked veggies, eggs, or anything else that needs to be boiled, you can place them in the coffee pot and heat them that way.
Slow-Cooker
Besides fixing meals, slow-cookers are also excellent tools for caramelizing onions and baking bread.
Food Processor
Food processors are extremely versatile. They can be used for making homemade ice cream or pizza dough, milling flour, or even preparing your own ground meat.
Photo by Flickr user bcmom.
Blender
With a minimal amount of time and ingredients, you can make your own whipped cream. Or, if you don’t plan on using your blender for food prep anymore, it’s great for mixing up homemade laundry powder.
Refrigerators
Did you know that storing your beauty products in the refrigerator can give them longer shelf lives? Anything from eye cream to acne and anti-aging products can be tucked away for later. Perfumes can also stay potent later by being kept cool.
Photo by Flickr user Kevin Dooley.
Dishwasher
It’s entirely possible to cook fish in your dishwasher. Simply prepare it, wrap it in aluminum foil, and put it in a cycle by itself. However, if this feels too wasteful to you and you want to cook and clean your dishes simultaneously, put your food in airtight jars or vacuum-sealed bags instead. Then they won’t be touched by the detergent but still cook well.
If you want to use a dishwasher for its intended purpose, there are plenty of things that can be placed inside and washed well – and they aren’t necessarily your dinner plates! Household items from dog leashes and sports gear to vacuum attachments and toothbrushes can be effectively cleaned with your dishwasher.
Photo by Flickr user msscacti.
Microwave
A microwave is a handy little tool for all sorts of food preparation tasks. If you need to roast garlic or nuts, it’ll do the trick. It can be used to ease peels off of tomatoes, soften brown sugar, or help get the juice flowing from lemons and limes. If you have soggy potato chips, lay them on a paper towel in the microwave and it’ll absorb the moisture, making them good as new. Microwaves will even sterilize soil, removing harmful bacteria that could keep plants from growing.
Freezer
This is probably the strangest one. Apparently, you are able to recover data from a computer hard drive that crashed if you put it in the freezer for 3 to 5 hours. Who knew!
Did any of these secondary uses for ordinary appliances surprise you? Which would you be most likely to try? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
