9 Common Household Items with Lots of Uses ...

One of the most useful household items that multi-task is good old lip balm. If you want to un-stick the zipper on some pants, or find that your light bulb sockets need some lubrication, or your drawers aren’t running smoothly, lip balm can come to the rescue. Who would’ve thought that the little pot of quite disgusting gloop can actually be so helpful in the home?

Plastic grocery bags doubtlessly grace the cupboards and drawers of most households, even though we are constantly being told to use reusable bags in favour of the damaging plastic ones. Well if you are a culprit (and let’s face it, we all are) and have stashed some away, you can use them in various ways. One of their most useful purposes is to use them instead of bubble-wrap when packaging breakable items – inexpensive, yet really helpful! Use them to make a mini-greenhouse for plants that need special care, use them to keep anything from getting wet, use them as shoe stretchers … anything – just recycle and reuse them.

Perhaps the king of the household items that multi-task is the humble tube of toothpaste. You can make scratched CDs as good as new, polish your silver and clean a dirty pair of sneakers which you thought you’d have to throw out. If you combine it with a small amount of glue, you can even fix a frayed end of shoe laces!

I know what you’re thinking: how on earth are magnets household items with multiple uses? You can use them to seal bags you keep in the fridge, keep your tool box organised and sort out your screws. The uses for magnets may even stretch into things you didn’t think of, like helping to clear out a fish tank (one magnet in a sponge, another on the outside of the glass to clean it without getting messy) or to make your own spice rack. The possibilities with magnets truly are endless.

Vinegar has multiple uses around the home. You can put a drop in your washing machine to recharge your towels, or even deodorize any number of things. You can unclog drain pipes, and give a sparkly-new appearance to the screens of your electronics. Combine it with newspaper to clean windows and use it to degrease a dishwasher.

Although they might appear useless, paper clips are actually one of the multi-tasking household products which we all take for granted. You can keep your man’s ties and your scarves and belts straight and organised, break a padlock (your own padlock, of course!), hold mini USB sticks and help you to put on your bracelets when there’s nobody else around. Paper clips are deceivingly useful – no longer will you need them to just hold bits of paper together. There are even ways of turning the humble paper clip into a multi-use safety pin!

Even if you don’t have a cat, it never hurts to have a spare bag of kitty litter lying around the house. Much like vinegar, you can use it to deodorize a variety of things such as shoes, trashcans and even the refrigerator. It can also be used in place of rice to dry out electronics dropped into water (so if you’ve accidentally dropped your cell phone down the loo, it’s kitty litter to the rescue).

Don’t think of a hair dryer as simply being a means to dry your hair. Despite its name, the hair dryer has a multitude of other purposes – you can clean the dust and dirt away from your keyboard, stretch shoes which are a bit too tight and help with removing stickers which the kids have decided to stick all over their bedroom walls. Of course, hair drying is the main purpose, but the other uses are endless!

We’re not talking about your glitter polish, nor your most expensive favorite color, but nail polish is another of the common items around the home with multiple uses. Use various shades to color code your keys, touch up paint jobs on metal items to prevent rusting, and stop runs in panty hose.

These are some household items that multi-task that I love. Trouble is I end up with a stockpile of nail polish, magnets and paperclips! What are your favorite multi-taskers around the house?