Fifteen Household Uses for Table Salt

You just don't stop now, do you?

Yea, I use salt to kill snails. It can be used salt for cuts and sores in the mouth. Great article.

Yea, I use salt to kill snails. It can be used for cuts and sores in the mouth. Great article.

Water will boil hotter, but never faster if salted. When adding to the concentration of a chemical in a solution (in this case, adding salt to the water), you are increasing the boiling point, meaning it is now higher. This means it will take a little longer to boil, but boil hotter.

Great info. Salt can also be added to vinegar to clean tarnished coins. Pennies seem to shine the best. The solution is actually a weak hydrochloric acid.

I read most of both your articles(vinegar & salt). I remembered this from previous searches, regarding flu relief. I just thought you might be able to use important points. Good articles. Keep writing.

Nasal Spray/Wash
This formula is useful for treating and preventing colds, flu’s and allergies. It can be used either as a nasal spray or wash. The spray is useful to treat symptoms or as a prophylaxis. Use as a wash to more aggressively treat symptoms or prevent illness on known exposure.

Nasal Spray/Wash Formula
Ingredient Quantity
US Measure Metric
Water 1 cup 237 ml
Salt ¼ scant to level teaspoon 1.25 ml
Xylitol 2½ level teaspoon 12.32 ml
GSE 4 drops NutriBiotic®
Grapefruit Seed Extract

Instructions: Use of warm water (preferably non-chlorinated, filtered or distilled) helps to dissolve ingredients and, when used as a wash, is comforting. Stir mixture until the ingredients dissolve completely. Pickling salt is preferred to regular table salt as the latter usually has undesirable additives (to enhance flow). The salt is soothing and therapeutic. While the xylitol is optional, it helps to wash away germs and pollutants in your sinuses, and makes it difficult for germs to colonize. If you have liquid NutriBiotic GSE, add 4 drops. Other brands may have different sized drops or potencies, so adjust as needed. NutriBiotic has fairly small drops and is 33% Citricidal. Some GSE brands are triple strength, or 100% Citricidal. The GSE is useful to attack germs and acts as a preservative. Without GSE, use formula within a few days or discard.

Nice article!

Another informative article. You did a great job!

and add salt to disinfect a wound

Salt can also be used to treat open wounds as well as salt food. You can even put it in a salt shaker!

Another 2 uses:

- Cool Drinks quicker. Pop a handful of salt into a bucket of water and throw in some ice, mix it around. The salt allows the water to become colder. Pop some drinks in the mix and they'll be nice and cool to drink in a couple of minutes!

- Throw some on the coals during a BBQ to stop it smoking. I haven't done this but I had a greek friend tell me this, they tend to know about BBQs :D

Add a pinch of salt to cold coffee to make it taste reasonable again.

kewls tuff here ...

Also, if you have something rusted that you'd like to shine again; salt, vinegar, and lemon juice will do the trick. That goes back to the tarnish coin idea.

And did anyone mention throwing salt over your right shoulder is good luck?! =]

Great article!

If you spill/break a raw egg onto the floor or wherever, (it doesn't matter if it floats or sinks), just poor salt over it, and then wipe it up. The salt will absorb most everything and make cleanup a cinch.

Using salt to cool drinks faster is actually the fastest household way to cool drinks. Salted ice water will cool a can or bottle much faster than a freezer (unless you have a flash freezer). Plus, with a little research, i think it would have become quickly and easily obvious that salted water does not boil faster, just hotter. Basic physics. The only way you could have a situation where salt makes water boil faster is if you took two pots of water near boiling and threw a pinch of salt in one. the water receiving salt will burst into a boil, but this would also happen if you threw a pinch of sand in, because the salt crystals provided nucleation sites that would allow the water to vaporize as the salt fell through the superheated liquid. If the salt becomes dissolved before the water reaches a boil, it will take longer, but the amount of salt per volume being added is so relatively small that the difference would be hard to detect.

Gargling salt water also eases a sore throat! Just don't swallow the salt water afterwards!!! ;)

good stuff

Nice article, but you shouldn't encourage putting salt on car windows. It's a catalyst that makes the metals rust faster.

Isopropyl alcohol and kosher salt together make a killer bong/pipe/glass cleaner. Unlike water, the salt will not fully disolve and will remain physically abrasive. They sell the same mixture food-coloring-enhanced at the local head shop.

Wait...if you put salt in your garden to keep away "pests" won't it also kill all of your plants...people used to do this way back when they raided villages so they couldn't grow crops...unless the flower somehow helps this?

You can put a couple of tablespoons of salt into a container of ice and water. It will lower the freezing temperature of the water and become colder that 32F. Good for cooling drinks quickly!

Salt puts out small kitchen fires...especially handy if it's a grease fire. The salt smothers the flames.

Beach Hair!

Make a solution of salt & water - lots of salt - in a spray bottle.
Spray on damp or dry hair, then style. Makes hair thicker feeling, holds spiky or tousled look. Good for refreshing these types of styles, too.

There are products on the market that sell for $15 a bottle - they are basically the same thing. Use a bit of gel or pomade to extend the effects...

Sprinkling salt on the napkin that restarunts use as drink coasters will keep the napkin from sticking to your glass when you pick it up.

One of my friends accidentally put dish soap in the dishwasher. A few minutes later we had a huge sudsy mess all over the kitchen. A quick sprinkling of salt gets rid of all the bubbles.

We also added salt to the bubbles in the dishwasher and ran the rinse cycle to get rid of all the suds.

For tropical fish suffering from "hole in the head" worms and other parasites, they benefit or cure by adding a pinch of salt to the tank

How good is salt on cleaning stainless steel or something

=D Thought I'd be the last one this time! Salt is so versatile and handy! Good article.

Salt taste good :P

Some useful tips here. Thanks.

Salt can also be used to make food taste more salty!
Very usefull when your food does not taste salty enough and lacks that extra salty kick.

SALT!!! Wooooooo........

buy a neti-pot add warm water and a little salt pour it down your nose and feel the effect.

will shampooing your hair with a salt shampoo
after a relaxer stop the reaction of the relaxer?

Very interesting and informative. Thanks.

Very interesting and informative. Thanks.

Adding salt to boiling noodles will prevent the noodles sticking to the pan.

WARNING: Science Ahead !

Hi Darlene,

Forgive me, but I have to correct a long-standing misconception about your #10 above: \"Boil water: Water will boil quicker if salted\".

There is a principle of chemistry known as \"Boiling point elevation and Freezing point depression\" which is taught in most high school and university chemistry classes. It roughly states that \'anything\' that is dissolved in a liquid will raise the boiling temperature and lower the feezing temperature of that liquid.

So for instance, adding table salt to water will change it\'s boiling temperature from the familiar 212*F to some higher number depending on how much salt is added. The more salt, the higher the number. For a teaspoon of salt dissolved in a half gallon of water, the boiling temperature would rise slightly to ~214*F.

Conversely, the same solution will not freeze at the familiar 32*F but something slightly lower like ~30*F.

The explanation for this phenomenon is that some of the heat energy being used to boil the water is absorbed by the sodium and cloride ions in the solution. Thus, it takes more heat energy bring the water to boil. This can only be accomplished at a higher temperature.

The opposite is true for freezing the solution. The sodium and cloride ions introduce more energy into the water. This will require the extraction of more energy to freeze the solution solid (i.e. \'more cold is needed\'). This is the reason we use salt to de-ice the ground in winter: On a 32*F winter morning, pure water will freeze to the 32*F ground. When we add salt to the ice, it liquifies again. It would take a slight drop in the temperature of the ground to refreeze our salt water. This is freezing point depression at work. (And winters don\'t need any more depression than they already have for most people).

Now that the Myth has been Busted like on the TV show, there is a nice side effect from adding salt to water for cooking:

The water will take longer to boil as demonstrated above, but it will be boiling at a HOTTER temperature. This means that the food can be cooked in LESS time ! It\'s a nice trade off since boiling some water doesn\'t take any work and cooking your food will take less work !

I stumbled upon this article while doing some research, so I took a break by writing this little \'essay\'. It was fun. I hope the readers enjoy it !

Best wishes, Darlene...

Oh, I forgot to mention:

A GREAT way to get water to boil MUCH faster is to just put a lid on the pot/pan. This traps A LOT of heat above the water. It's like having a burner on 2 sides of the water instead of just one.

Saltwater solution works GREAT for thickening hair!!!! Try it!

Sit in a basin half filled with salted warm water to get

relief from painful piles. In the absence of a suitable

basin slowly pour saltd warm water over the area. Magneci-

um sulphate in place of common salt would fetch better -

results.