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If you are anything like me, you probably drink lots of coffee. I personally drink half a pot most days (though some days require a full pot!) With all the coffee consumption comes a lot of used coffee grounds. Like all good Frugalites, I try to waste as little as possible, so finding ways to use even a portion of these coffee grounds is far better than throwing them in the trash.
While I haven’t tried all of these myself yet, I definitely intend to give the ones I haven’t a shot, and continue with the ones I have.
Garden Fertilizer
While I might not be much of a gardener (yet!), I’ve always heard that coffee grounds can be great for fertilizer and helping to grow plants. While they can be, it is a topic that can require a bit of research. If you have a compost bin, feel free to put the used coffee grounds directly in. Mixed with all the other garden goodies, the coffee should break down to the right acidity level to be perfect for most plants.
If, on the other hand, you’re looking to put the used coffee grounds directly into your garden, I highly recommend making sure that the way you do extra research, as, if done incorrectly, it can do more harm than good. This article is a pretty comprehensive guide that will teach you the basics of using coffee grounds for your garden, both in a standard compost as well as directly onto your garden.
Help Remove Strong Smells
When I was younger, I remember going into the perfume stores and seeing little bowls of coffee beans all over the place. I thought it was one of the weirdest things ever, but I assumed that they served a purpose. Upon asking, I learned that smelling the coffee beans can act almost like a nose pallet cleanser of sorts. In other words, if you smelled the coffee, it was like a giant reset button for your nose. As someone who gets a lot of headaches from too many strong smells, being able to smell the coffee almost clears out the other scents and can really help.
Not only can it give you a fresh sniffer, but coffee beans, even used coffee grounds, can act as a deodorizer and help lessen strong smells or bad smells. While it’s not as multi-purpose as baking soda, it has a similar effect. If you have an item that is smaller and often carries an unpleasant or strong smell, you can also store it in a used coffee canister. My go-to brand has plastic ones, and they are super great and durable.
Exfoliating Body Scrubs
Another great use for used coffee grounds is homemade exfoliating scrubs. They are fairly quick and easy to make, and there are a wide range of recipes out there, depending on what you like. Not only will you get the great benefits of exfoliation at a much lower price, but caffeine can also be good for your skin in smaller quantities. A fair amount of skin creams and products designed to tighten loose skin or help with wrinkles actually contain caffeine, as studies have shown that it can be helpful.
One warning that I have seen a couple of times is that if you aren’t already a regular caffeine and coffee drinker, you should do a test patch to make sure that you don’t have a reaction to the new scrub.
Coffee Grounds and Icy Walkways?
An often-quoted misconception is that sprinkling used coffee grounds on icy driveways and sidewalks will melt the ice, like standard road salt, even if just to a lesser degree. It was something I’d believed myself for a while, too. While the coffee itself won’t actually melt the ice, it can still serve a few purposes.
If you’ve lived somewhere cold and snowy, you’ve probably seen that sometimes, instead of salt, there are trucks that put dirt on the road. Like coffee, this is often believed to be for ice-melting purposes. In reality, the dirt actually serves to add more traction to the ice, allowing people, pets, and vehicles to have a better grip. Coffee does the same thing! When you add used coffee grounds to the icy spot, it helps to add a little extra grippiness. It does have one more perk. While it won’t fully melt the ice, if you spread it on an icy patch on a sunny day, the dark color of the grounds will draw a little more heat in, which may help the ice melt.
What Do You Do with Your Coffee Grounds
While these are some great ways to utilize your used coffee grounds, I’m sure there are many more. What do you do with yours? Have you heard of any interesting uses for coffee grounds that you have yet to attempt yourself? Let’s chat about it in the comments!
About Chloe Morgan
Chloe Morgan grew up living with a tight budget. In her late teens and early 20’s, all the lessons she’d learned started to slip, like it does for many college-age students on their own for the first time with their first credit card. As she’s gotten older, she’s started to deal with the repercussions and has taken on a frugal way of living, keeping her costs low, as she pays off debt and saves for her future. Chloe lives on Vancouver Island, Canada, with her dog, Rhea.
Check out her Simple Debt & Budget Trackers, and her other work on TheOrganicPrepper.com and TheFrugalite.com where she writes about food, frugality, finances, and self-reliance, or her work on Medium, where she writes about lifestyle, mental health, and writing.
7 thoughts on “4 Things To Do with Used Coffee Grounds”
I stopped using my organic coffee grounds in compost when I read several articles by well known gardeners who warned about the damage done to earthworms.
I do use coffee grounds to safely dispose of old medications.
We use coffee grounds in our compost all the time and around our garden and we have SO MANY earthworms! They love the compost and as soon as it just starts to break down I find a ton of them in there and then I stop adding to that particular pile and just turn it. Then I start a new pile to keep the cycle going. We also use them in large quantities from our local organic coffee shop mixed with wood chips that we got from a neighbor and use that to mulch around our fruit trees.
I’ve been hoping for some news about Daisy. It’s been over a week since her surgery. Anyone out there heard anything?
I’ve been composting coffee grounds for decades. Depending on winter temps, turning the pile might not happen all that often. But they do add a bit of moisture. It has taken a number of years but we’re starting to see soil improvement from household compost and leaves.
I save certain thick glasses spaghetti sauce jars. The smell is almost impossible to get out of the lids even with soaking and vinegar. I dump used coffee grounds into the lids and keep changing until the smell is gone. Works well.
I grow mushrooms in mine. Simple and the base thread looking structure grows quickly in used coffee grounds. I just add water after that a keep growing mushrooms for weeks on each batch. My current mushroom is woody so not a favorite for cooking but it has a good flavor. I harves frequently and dry them. Then a few at a time I put them in a blender and turn them into powder. It becomes a seasoning in cooked dishes.
I’ll try a different variety soon that is a favorite raw or cooked.
I have scrubbed burnt food in a cooking pot with the grounds but wasn’t too impressed. They will take up food odors such as cantaloupe melon. So I keep a baby food jar of dry used coffee ground’s ready if I put something like that in the fridge.
I use my coffee grounds on my blueberry bushes. I’ve seen a huge increase in the amount of berries I get!