Washing foil

by Lili Mounce

It's no secret that thrifty folk often wash their aluminum foil for reuse. We all have our preferred ways to wash, dry and store our foil. Here's mine.

I lay my piece of foil out flat, on a large baking sheet (the kind without sides). After squirting with some liquid dish soap, I use a wet wash rag to both smooth out the wrinkles and clean the foil. I rinse under a stream of hot water.

To dry, I stand the pieces on end, on the bottom rack, in my empty dishwasher, between the tines, as I would if it were a tray. I allow it to drip dry for several hours.

When dry, I stand them on end and store them in one of those tall and narrow, base cabinets, designed for storing trays and baking sheets. It's the perfect size and width for sheets of foil. I used to store them flat, on top of stuff in the pantry, but they were constantly in the way, and would get all wrinkled with moving them about frequently.

For those of you totally satisfied with your method of washing, drying and storing your foil, here's some incentive to keep you washing the shiny stuff.

I can buy a 25 linear foot roll of Reynold's Wrap foil at the dollar store for $1. I typically use sheets about 18 inches long. One dollar store roll will provide 16 of these sheets. If I throw each sheet away after one use, in a year's time I will spend about $6 on foil, and I will go through 6 small boxes of the dollar store foil. In 10 years' time I will spend $60, and will have thrown 60 boxes of foil into the landfill. I don't even know how to calculate how much fossil fuel is used to manufacture this foil.

If I wash and reuse each sheet of foil 7-8 times before throwing out, in one year's time I will spend about 80 cents on foil, and not quite use the entire box. In 10 years' time, I will spend $8 on foil, and send only 8 boxes of foil to the landfill.

In addition, because I am willing to wash and reuse foil, I can obtain free used foil from time to time. This past week, we had a large hot dog picnic/barbeque at our church. The kitchen crew used copious amounts of foil to cover trays of hot dogs. I rescued much of this foil and brought it home to wash and reuse, about the equivalent of one and a half boxes of dollar store foil. I just acquired my year's supply or more of aluminum foil for free, while saving a large wad of scrunched up foil from eternal life at the city dump. So, keep on washing your aluminum foil, and know that you're saving some money and doing a good thing for our planet.


This copyrighted article was originally published on www.creativesavv.blogspot.com .If found published elsewhere, this material has been illegally scraped and should be reported to lili.mounce@gmail.com