I absolutely love my two and only two cups of coffee each morning.  And while I don’t brew coffee anymore (Keurig), I still have coffee grounds in those tiny little cups and have long forgotten about re-purposing. 

I have always known the gardening benefits of coffee grounds – worked great on my Roses but I did not know about the other useful facts below. 

• Erase the smell of garlic, salmon, cilantro on your hands. There are some things that smell delicious when cooking, but aren’t so pleasant hours later when they linger on your hands. Get rid of them by rubbing a handful of used coffee grounds on your hands and rinsing with warm water.

• Reduce fireplace mess. Want to clean your fireplace without causing a dust storm? Wait until the embers are cool, sprinkle damp coffee grounds all over the ashes, let them sit for about 15 minutes and then scoop out the whole mess into a metal ash can. The coffee grounds cling to the ashes, so they don’t spew dust nearly as much as they would otherwise.

• Exfoliate skin. The same properties that reportedly enable coffee to reduce the appearance of cellulite can smooth and tighten your skin, and the texture of ground coffee will buff away dead skin cells, too. Make your own coffee-based scrub by combining a tablespoon of coffee grounds with half a tablespoon of olive oil and, optionally, a drop of your favorite essential oil.

• Repel ants. Sprinkle dry, used coffee grounds in problem areas where you notice ants in your home or yard and they might just pick up and leave. To tackle huge ant mounds, pour an entire pot of brewed coffee right on the mound.

• Fertilize plants. Acid-loving plants will thank you for sprinkling your used coffee grounds around their roots. Azaleas, blueberry shrubs and rhododendrons are just a few of the plants that flourish when treated with coffee thanks to all those nutrients. You can also dilute the leftover coffee in your mug and pour it right into your potted plants (as long as you don’t use cream and sugar, of course!)

Enjoy that cup coffee and put those coffee grinds to good use! If you choose to have your coffee out – Austin has some really wonderfully weird coffee shops around town. Check out the list right here.