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I drink a lot of coffee, and coffee filters are cheap! If you are adopting a lifestyle of thrift or just want to be more frugal, you definitely will want to keep some coffee filters around!
Sometimes coffee filters are also one of those things you have extras of – whether they are for a different kind of pot you no longer have or if you have some old ones laying around.
Today I thought I’d share some of my favorite ways to use them for practically anything and everything!
1. Streak Free Window Cleaning With Coffee Filters
When I worked in a busy restaurant as a teenager, we always used coffee filters to clean the windows as well as the glass fixtures around the restaurant. They work great, and unlike towels or baby wipes won’t leave any streaks or fall apart leaving lint all over the window.
Using coffee filters is also quite economical! You may be surprised you don’t even need harsh chemicals for cleaning dirty windows!
2. Easy Clean-Up Serving Bowls for Snacks
While this won’t work for anything too messy, you can find that coffee filters work fantastic as a quick way to serve up snacks to the kiddos. They work great for popcorn, crackers, cookies, chips, candy – you name it! This is a super money and time saving technique to serve up snacks.
Helpful Tip: For heavier snacks that weigh more, you might want to double up on filters or choose filters that are more cone shaped, depending on the snack of course!
3. Reduce the Mess in the Microwave
If you’ve ever tried to microwave something messy in the microwave, such as spaghetti sauce, you know it can be quite the disaster. Coffee Filters come to the rescue — you can use them to prevent splashes when heating up leftovers – simply flatten out and place on top of the dish.
4. Use Instead of Paper Towels for Absorbing Grease From Foods
Coffee filters can actually do a better job soaking up grease from fried foods like french fries or bacon than paper towels. Simply line 2-3 of them on your dish and let them soak up any extra grease when you’re frying items at home or microwaving things. Many restaurants are now catching onto how useful this trick can be as well!
5. Ice Cream Cone Saver
Ever been out eating an ice cream cone only to have the ice cream drip everywhere? Using a coffee filter as an ice cream cone saver can help prevent a mess.
6. Quick Substitute for Paper Towels or Tissues
Coffee Filters are especially useful when there aren’t enough napkins handy, so you may want to keep a couple on hand in your purse.
They may not be quite as soft as you’d like, but they’re compact and lightweight. They’ll always work well as a substitute in a pinch when you don’t have paper towels or tissues on hand.
7. Check the Oil in Your Car
You don’t have to use a messy rag or paper towels to check your oil levels – Keep a few coffee filters in the trunk of your car with your other automotive supplies. Coffee filters work great to help you get accurate readings and reduce the mess!
8. Use Coffee Filters to Clean Your Camera Lens and Scanners
Coffee filters work great for cleaning your camera lens. They won’t scratch the lens, and they also won’t leave any lint behind, which can sometimes happen even with the best of microfiber cleaning cloths!
I actually started using coffee filters to clean my scanners as well – they work great!
9. Clean Your Glasses
Just like windows + camera lenses, you can also use coffee filters to clean your glasses – they actually work the best and won’t leave any lint on the lenses.
10. Make Your Own Disinfectant/Cleaning Wipes
Okay, so they might not be the softest thing, but the way they don’t leave lint behind + absorb/pass through liquid makes them awesome to use for rubbing alcohol, hand sanitizer, or even making your own lens/glass cleaning wipes.
Instead of buying individually wrapped wipes (which is so much wasteful packaging!) – you can always place them in an air-tight container such as a canning jar + then fill with rubbing alcohol to create your own!
11. In the Kitchen
I love using coffee filters anytime I need to measure ingredients, deal with messy things like raw eggs and more – it always helps make the clean-up so much easier and also helps save time when you pre-measure stuff!
12. In Your Art!
It’s no secret I love all things art journaling and mixed media art + crafts so naturally coffee filters make their way into my art all the time!
You can draw or paint on them directly, or you can even use them to help with organizing stuff in your craft/art room, such as holding beads, small pieces of paper, stamps — anything you need to collect really!
13. Wrapping + Packaging Items
If you sell stuff online or even in person at flea markets, you always have to take special care when wrapping stuff so it gets to its new home safely!
I always have coffee filters on hand at our flea market booth because they really are great for wrapping small, delicate things and are more flexible than newspaper if you have something dainty such as knick knacks or jewelry.
14. Sorting Trays
As someone who frequently buys bulk lots of assorted “junk”, coffee filters save the day when it comes to sorting things! You can quickly make piles for things like screws, buttons, pins, and whatever other little things you come across.
These are also awesome for sorting small things by color! For example, if I have a giant tin of vintage buttons, then I can quickly + easily sort colors by blue, green, yellow, etc. – which makes putting together my junk journal + sewing kits a breeze!
Ray is always building or fixing things too, so it’s not surprising he usually ends up with a box of “junk” full of hardware + parts of pieces – being able to sort that stuff is awesome!
15. iPhone Photo Flash Hack
If you are ever stuck using an iPhone in the dark or in a room with less than stellar lighting to take photos, a coffee filter is an awesome way to diffuse the flash on your camera.
Just place it over the flash (you can secure with rubber band if need be!) – and take your photo!
So there you have it, 15 awesome ways to use coffee filters you might not have thought of doing before! And of course, if you use them for something else, do tell me in the comments – I am always looking for more fun ideas!