7 Surprising Uses Of Coffee Grounds

As it turns out, that daily cup of coffee is good for more than just a morning pick-me-up. In the average coffee-loving household, it’s hard to name a more ubiquitous form of waste than used coffee grounds. After all, these damp remnants of the coffee-making process are produced daily and appear to have little use beyond creating your morning cup of joe. And while it’s easy to toss these black grounds right in the garbage without a thought, your used coffee grounds actually hold far more potential beyond waking you up. These simple and unexpected tips for recycling your grounds will put your coffee to miraculous use around your home, garden, and even your body.

1. Deodorize the freezer

You can easily get rid of the smell of spoiled food after a freezer failure. Simply fill a couple of bowls with used or fresh coffee grounds and place them in the freezer overnight. For a flavored-coffee scent, add a couple of drops of vanilla to the grounds.

2. Don’t raise any dust

Before you clean the ash out of your fireplace, sprinkle it with wet coffee grounds. It will be easier to remove, and the ash and dust won’t pollute the atmosphere of the room.

3. Keep worms alive in your garden

A cup of used coffee grounds will keep your bait worms alive and wiggling all day long. Just mix the grounds into the soil in your bait box before you dump in the worms. They like coffee almost as much as we do, and the nutrients in the grounds will help them live longer.

4. Keep cats out of the garden

Kitty won’t think of your garden as a toilet anymore if you spread a pungent mixture of orange peels and used coffee grounds around your plants. The mix acts as great fertilizer, too.

5. Fertilize your plants

Don’t throw out those old coffee grounds. They’re chock-a-block full of nutrients that your acid-loving plants crave. Save them to fertilize rosebushes, azaleas, rhododendrons, evergreens, and camellias. It’s better to use grounds from a drip coffeemaker than the boiled grounds from a percolator. The drip grounds are richer in nitrogen.

6. Boost carrot harvest

To increase your carrot harvest, mix the seeds with freshly ground coffee before sowing. Not only does the extra bulk make the tiny seeds easier to sow, but the coffee aroma may repel cutworms and other pests. As an added bonus, the grounds will help add nutrients to the soil as they decompose around the plants. You might also like to add a few radish seeds to the mix before sowing. The radishes will be up in a few days to mark the rows, and when you cultivate the radishes, you will be thinning the carrot seedlings and cultivating the soil at the same time.

7. Exfoliating body scrub

Turn your used coffee grounds into a luxurious body scrub that will leave your skin silky smooth and glowing. Just combine a half cup of used grounds with a quarter cup of olive or coconut oil and a pinch of citrus zest. It will slough off dead skin cells, tighten blood vessels and boost blood flow. Thank you, caffeine.