Holding a bag or canister of flour in the pantry is generally practical — and not just for baking. All-function flour is a pretty apt name, it turns out, because this very important baking component comes in helpful all about the dwelling.
So, if you’ve bought flour on hand and its shelf lifetime is coming to an conclude, don’t throw it absent! Listed here are 11 intelligent methods to put flour to use, and not toss money in the garbage.
Far more: What’s the finest way to retail outlet flour?
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1. Restore The Shine To Stainless Metal Appliances & Sinks
Even with the tough-sounding title, stainless steel can be incredibly sensitive. But it is effortless to buff stainless steel to a stunning shine with — you guessed it — flour. All you have to have are a pair of clear, dry rags. Cleanse the product with soapy drinking water, as standard, then dry it carefully. (As in, get all the humidity off that you can, so you don’t conclude up with flour-glue in all places.)
Buff the stainless metal with flour, remove the flour and stand back again a foot or two to admire the shine.
2. Use Flour To Make Enjoy Dough
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Inspiration strikes! The young children are raiding the Play-Doh — but they promptly explore that 50 percent of it wasn’t saved thoroughly, and it is now dry and crumbly. Time to whip up a batch, stat, with flour as the star component.
This no-prepare dinner recipe commences with a significant mix of flour and salt. That gets blended by the cup with a couple of other uncomplicated ingredients so you can make four diverse hues. No incredibly hot h2o or cooking essential!
3. Make Selfmade Glue For Collages & Paiper-mâché
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More affordable and arguably less difficult to perform with than rubber cement, building your individual glue for craft initiatives is a excellent option to jogging out to the retail outlet at 10 p.m. All you require is flour, sugar and h2o, plus a couple of minutes in excess of the stove.
No preservative is necessary if you’re making use of the glue immediately, but a minimal alum powder will aid preserve it fresh for a couple weeks if you make a significant batch.
4. Clear Your Deck Of Playing cards With Flour
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Following a lengthy road vacation or an epic game evening, you could possibly discover your taking part in playing cards acquired a greasy sheen. Flour to the rescue! Simply just set the playing cards into a bag, increase about ¼ cup of flour and shake the closed bag vigorously. Clear away the cards, wipe down with a paper towel and shuffle absent.
Flour performs like fanning powder, a merchandise employed by card magicians and other snazzy card handlers, to neaten up a deck and make it much easier to use.
5. Use Flour As A Normal Insect Repellent In Your Backyard garden
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Absolutely nothing is far more disheartening than spending a great deal of time (and dollars) to produce a lovely garden — only to explore the telltale symptoms of hungry bugs chewing up your crops.
Alternatively of picking up a severe chemical pesticide, give flour a consider initially. Applying a sifter, dust flour about the leaves of susceptible plants. A day later, spray off the flour and reapply as required. Make certain the leaves are dry ahead of dusting the flour each and every time.
Supposedly, the flour gums up the human body parts of bugs who check out to take in the leaves, and they die right before they do significantly destruction.
6. Freshen Materials With Home made Laundry Starch
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Bought a special situation coming up? Make your have laundry starch to give clothing the crisp lines you crave. (No particular celebration? Use do-it-yourself starch on your sheets for a luxuriously clean come to feel.)
Blend a tablespoon of flour with ½ cup chilly h2o, having care to sleek out any lumps. Insert the mixture to ½ cup boiling h2o and stir constantly. Following it thickens a bit, enable it amazing prior to pouring it into a spray bottle. Spray away!
7. Use Flour As A All-natural Ant Repellent In Your Residence
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If you have ants creeping into your residence, sprinkle a line of flour where ever you see them coming into. You can also make a defensive line of flour in your pantry if you know the pests like to invade that area as nicely. Ants will not wander throughout the flour, potentially for the reason that it disrupts the scent trails they use to stick to just about every other. The flour by itself may eliminate the ants, as well, by growing in their stomachs … but the science is a minimal sketchy there.
8. Use Flour As A Dry Shampoo
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The excellent ingredient if you are in a pinch, all-reason flour can be used to soak up extra oil in your hair just like common dry shampoo.
This model uses rye flour for its pH-balanced homes, but all-objective flour arrives in at about a 6 on the pH scale — just a tad on the alkaline facet of neutral. Use a brush to implement to the underside of your hair, make sure you are not dripping flour-dust all over the place, and you are very good to go.
A fast suggestion: If you have darker hair, consider adding a very little cocoa powder to darken the mixture.
9. Polish Your Copper With Flour
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Above time, copper loses its luster. But you just can’t just thoroughly clean it any old way without jeopardizing hurt.
Combine equivalent areas flour and salt collectively, then insert enough vinegar to make a paste. Scrub it onto your copper pots and pans, buffing to a shiny finish. Give them a rinse in warm h2o, then make confident they dry totally — go in advance and gently dry with a gentle fabric to speed points together.
10. Use Flour To Ripen An Avocado
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Bought avocados? If they’re difficult as rocks, but you genuinely desired to make some guacamole this 7 days, toss your avocados in a bag with plenty of flour to cover, then sit restricted.
The strategy is that ethylene fuel — which fruits by natural means emit and brings about ripening — will be trapped against the avocados by the flour, rushing up the ripening. It nonetheless might get a working day or two to get to maximum ripeness, specifically if you’re starting up with very challenging avocados, but it’s worth a shot.
11. Make A Rejuvenating Confront Mask Making use of Flour
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The added benefits of antioxidants in skin treatment merchandise are nicely documented — even tone, decreased redness, anti-growing older results — and this brief mask is an easy way to implement these helpful nutrition straight to the pores and skin. (And perhaps use up some grapes in advance of they go lousy.)
Smash a handful of grapes in a bowl with about 4 tablespoons of flour. Preserve smushing right until the grape juice turns the flour into a purple paste. Unfold the paste on your confront, sit tight for 10-15 minutes and wash off.
