The Coffee Grounds Trick That Brings Dirty Pots And Pans Back To Life

Did you know that an all-purpose cleaner is sitting inside your coffee machine? While it may sound a bit wacky, the spent coffee grounds from your morning cup of joe are actually a fantastic dish cleaner, particularly to scrub dirty pots and pans with stubborn stains to bring them back to life. Instead of throwing out those grounds, try setting them aside to work away any tough stains and residue left on your cookware. It's definitely an unexpected, yet genius way to reuse coffee grounds around the house instead of tossing them out.

Using grounds for your dishes is very easy. Place some of the coffee grounds into your pots or pans, adding some warm water and dish soap to the mix. Using the soft side of the sponge (stay away from the coarse side, more on that later), apply some pressure and begin scrubbing. While this works for cookware with regular stains, this coffee grounds and dish soap duo works particularly well on those tough, caked-on spots on your pots and pans. It may take a little bit more elbow grease, but the grounds will scrub away at those stains, much like chemical-based, abrasive cleaners, but in a much more organic way. Rinse well afterwards, and your pots will be sparkling! If you're done with the grounds for cleaning and have leftovers, consider fertilizing your garden with them; there are plenty of coffee-loving plants out there.

The texture of coffee grounds is the key to its cleaning abilities. The grounds are quite coarse, like baking soda or salt, but not so much so that they risk scratching your pots and pans. That said, avoid using this trick with aggressive cleaning tools, like steel wool, since the combination of the grounds' coarseness with the wool's incredible abrasiveness is a recipe for long-lasting scratch marks on your cookware. For this reason, avoid using coffee grounds on materials that easily scratch, too, like non-stick or enamel. Instead, stick to the soft parts of sponges and use grounds on cast iron or stainless steel. 

Something to keep in mind about using coffee grounds for dishes is that you need to avoid sending them down the drain. While it's an old wives' tale that coffee grounds can be good for your pipes and plumbing, in reality, when these food scraps accumulate in your pipes, it will create a goopy, gross blockage. Though you may think flushing grounds with excess water will do the trick, it will take a whole lot of water to effectively rid your pipes of any remnants, and you'll likely have to look for alternative ways to fix a clogged drain from coffee. Thus, if you're using grounds to clean pots and pans, be sure to place a food catch or strainer at the bottom of the sink to catch the grounds. If you keep this in mind, though, you'll have squeaky-clean cookware in no time.