Unusual Uses for Ordinary Things: 250 Creative Solutions Using Everyday Items

Most people use nail polish remover to remove nail polish. They use coffee grounds to make coffee and hair dryers to dry their hair. The majority of people may also think that the use of eggs, lemons, mustard, butter, and mayonnaise should be restricted to making delicious food in the kitchen. The Instructables.com community would disagree with this logic—they have discovered hundreds of inventive and surprising ways to use these and other common household materials to improve day-to-day life.

Did you know that tennis balls can protect your floors, fluff your laundry, and keep you from backing too far into (and thus destroying) your garage? How much do you know about aspirin? Sure, it may alleviate pain, but it can also be used to remove sweat stains, treat bug bites and stings, and prolong the life of your sputtering car battery. These are just a few of the quirky ideas that appear in Unusual Uses for Ordinary Things.

Readers of Unusual Uses for Ordinary Things will learn how to:
 

• Remove odors from clothes using vodka
• Shine leather belts, wallets, purses, and jackets using butter
• Remove scuffs from sneakers using toothpaste
• Locate small objects once thought to be gone forever using pantyhose
• And much more!

Instructables.com is a bona fide Internet sensation, a web-based community of motivated do-it-yourselfers who contribute invaluable how-to guides to the site on a wide range of topics, from gardening and home repair to recipes to gadgets that defy categorization. The site hosts more than 100,000 projects. More than 15 million people visit the site each month, leaving comments and suggestions on the ever-growing list of do-it-yourself projects.

Wade Wilgus is a former Oakland middle school teacher whose projects range from useful classroom activities to gluing mustaches to pistachios. He is the managing editor of Instructables, but spends the majority of his time figuring out ways to integrate meaningful research and hands-on learning in the classroom. He is always astounded by the creativity of his colleagues and encourages everyone to check out Instructables to see their brilliant work.