Alternate uses for appliances

REMEMBER MacGyver, the show about a guy with a terrible mullet who could improvise a two-way radio out of a stick of gum? Well, we’re in a MacGyver kind of mood…

There are a lot of ordinary household appliances whose functionality is so basic it can be applied to more than one task. A hairdryer, for example, is essentially a gun that shoots air, a tool that wouldn’t be out of place next to a sawdusty electric jigsaw.

Modern appliances tend to be very function-specific but the old stand-bys are more straightforward machines. They’re closer relatives of the wheel – simple, practical and infinitely useful. Some of the ideas below may not seem like day-to-day lifesavers but take them as a jumpstart to your own creativity. You might just avoid a headache or two.

The dishwasher is a pretty heavy duty contraption, with a fair amount of variability in its cycles, temperatures and rack placements. People have been known to steam fish wrapped in foil in the dishwasher but it may not shock you to find cleaning is what this device does best.

A wide range of hard-to-clean items are unsurprisingly dishwasher-safe. Non-electric barbeque components, sports equipment, pet toys, garden tools and fan cages all get pretty nasty and fit nicely on the top rack. Gunked-up hair clips, combs, brushes, scrunchies and barrettes will survive the soaking just as well.

Footwear without leather is usually okay in the dishwasher. Most sneakers should come out in one piece, as well as thongs, many sandals, crocs and rubber boots. It may be best to test these cleaning attempts on the milder settings at first but when it comes to de-germing sponges and dustpans, go ahead and blast the heat.

Watch out for all the articles on the internet that swear you can clean a computer keyboard in the dishwasher. Your common sense is probably right about this one. 

A hot-air pistol is a pretty useful thing, especially if you’ve got a cordless model. They are great for drying out wet shoes in a hurry or warming up a stubborn screw to loosen it and ease removal.

If you can tone down the heat, hairdryers also make great dusters. You can manoeuvre them about light fixtures, delicate lampshades or fragile and hard to reach decorations. They’re also handy for blowing out the dust and fuzz that collects in the crevices of fine jewellery.

If you’ve got a bathroom close to the kitchen, all the better. Hairdryers are perfect for setting the icing on a cake, unsticking cake from a pan or softening up a carton of ice cream. You could run the scoop under hot water just as well but it’ll only help on the first scoopful.

Try the cool-air setting to blow excess moisture off freshly-washed lettuce.

Like mobile phones, microwave ovens are probably a lot safer than most of the urban myths about their radiation levels would have you believe. However, SuperLiving is keen to remind you not to get too experimental with these powerful and potentially hazardous appliances.

One of the more practical applications of a microwave outside of cooking is its ability to disinfect and deodorise. This is especially useful for sponges or raggedy scouring pads that can be expensive to replace too often.

Potting soil can be sterilised for seedlings after 90 seconds in the microwave.

The microwave is also an ideal tool for drying out herbs which can then be stored in the freezer for future use. Wrap them in paper towels and run on high, checking at 30 second intervals until they crumble in your fingers.

Many people advise warming old beauty products (especially dried mascara) in the microwave to give them renewed life. But the results of this procedure are mixed at best, and make-up containers may include materials unsuitable for a microwave. Not recommended.   

People put weird stuff in their freezer all the time. There are a lot of myths and exaggerations about what a freezer can do. One of the most popular concepts is freezing your batteries to prolong their charge.

Battery companies tend not to recommend this and although science supports a marginal increase in the longevity of alkaline batteries, the benefits are hardly worth the inconvenience.

Batteries cannot be used when they’re cold, so if you need them for a torch in a blackout, you might have to use your hairdryer to warm them up. But the hairdryer runs on electric current unless it’s cordless – in which case you already have batteries. This would never happen to MacGyver.

The freezer can be used to unstick photos from photo albums (if kept dry) and to salvage unpopped popcorn kernels to pop another day. It can also extend the burning time of wax candles and kill off woodworms and their eggs in wooden decorations.

But the strangest and most interesting use of the freezer may be to save the information on your computer hard drive if it suddenly dies. Place the hard drive in the freezer for 24 hours and then try to reboot the computer. The back-from-the-dead hard drive may last just long enough to save your irreplaceable files to the safety of a disc. It goes without saying, this demands crossed fingers but it’s worth a try.