10 Smart Uses for Salt

Although doctors and nutritionists advise controlling your salt intake, there are many other ways in which you can put it to good use. Some simple and useful ideas:

1. Add 1 cup of salt to your laundry load when washing deep-colored fabric or towels, for the first few times. The saline solution helps set the pigment, so that color doesn’t bleed and clothes don’t fade.

2. If you’ve just bought shower curtains, soak them for a few hours in your bathtub in about 4 inches of water and a cup of salt. Then hang the liner without drying it. The salt forms an invisible coating on the shower curtain, protecting it from mildew. Repeat this treatment every three months for best results.

3. Mix one tsp. of salt with 1 cup of water. Dip a cloth napkin in this solution, wring it and wrap it around leftover wedges of cheese. Put the wrapped cheese in the refrigerator. Thanks to the salt crystals, your cheese will stay mold-free!

4. Got gunk on your steam iron? Spread out a sheet of wax paper, and sprinkle some salt over it. Now heat your iron for a couple of minutes, switch off the steam setting, and run it over the wax paper. The sticky residue will come off easily, thanks to the abrasive salt granules and the heat.

5. Salt is a natural anti-microbial agent. If you add a pinch or two of it to the water in your flower vase, the blooms will stay fresh longer.

6. Mix a little salt with sesame oil or mustard oil in the center of your palm. Now dip your finger into the salted oil, and give your gums a gentle massage with it. The result: strong gums and shiny pearls!

7. Rinsing your mouth with salted water brings relief from toothache, even if only for a while. That’s because salt draws out the germs from an abcess and drains it away. The result: relief!

8. Salt also assuages minor burns. Make a thick paste of salt and water and apply it all over the affected area. The inflammation will reduce quickly.

9. Come summer, and ants start creepin’ up window sills. Sprinkling a little salt keeps them away.

10. Soak walnuts and pecans in salted water for a couple of hours, and you’ll find that they shell more easily.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Latoya B.

5:04AM PDT on Apr 6, 2013

My first thought was of Supernatural.

Salt is used for protection circles, warding off spirits, and purification rituals.

April 6
send a green star

Nils Anders L.

11:27AM PDT on Mar 14, 2013

March 14
send a green star

Christina B.

4:11PM PST on Jan 17, 2013

Salted water is an age-old recipe for toothache, but not because it can drain abscesses (if that were the case, dentists would soon run out of patients). What it does do, is reduce the swelling.

How does that happen?

Have you noticed how the tips of your fingers get wrinkled when you stay in the sea for too long? That happens because the concentration of salt water in mineral content is a lot higher than that in the water in your body's tissue. When two solutions of different concentrations are separated by a semi-permeable membrane (your skin), however, they tend to equalize their concentrations. So, water from the less dense solution moves towards the most dense one.

Same thing happens with salt water and abscesses.