Sure, you already know that aspirin is a powerful anti-inflammatory. However, were you aware that this headache reliever has quite a few reported other uses in its bag of tricks? While many of them are non-medical, I was surprised to learn that uncoated aspirin is being used to soothe, fix, and repair almost everything—from patching drywall to zapping soap scum around the bathtub.
Here are ten astonishing uses for uncoated aspirin…
1. Zap Zits
Did you know that the salicylic acid in Aspirin clears the pores? That’s why a crushed tablet in water can banish acne inflammation and even clear pores of pus and infection in a matter of minutes. Simply make a paste with a bit of water and smear it over your blemish, letting sit for few minutes before you wash it off with clean warm water.
2. Conceal a Hickey
If you a vampire or another amorous companion sucking a little too hard at your neck, an aspirin can banish that hickey—and quick if you get to it the very next day. To avoid being pressured to share all the details of your romantic conquest, dissolve an aspirin tablet in a half-cup of lukewarm water and apply the mask directly to your hickey to instantly soothe inflammation and redness while encouraging blood flow to the surface of your skin.
3. Remove Soap Scum
Ewwww—look at that soap scum around your skin or tub! Before a visit from your mother-in-law has you forking over a small fortune in “miracle” soap scum-fighting, cleaning supplies, reach for a bottle of aspirin. A few dissolved tablets have the same exfoliating power to banish soap grime from hard surfaces.
4. Boost Your Car
I bet you didn’t think aspirin would be handy in the garage? However, it will boost a dead car battery in a pinch! Simply drop a few aspirin tablets into the battery cells—the acetylsalicylic acid that makes up the aspirin will react to the sulfuric battery acid—to actually jump-start the old beast for long enough to get you to a mechanic.
5. Stain Remover
Yellow pit stains are pretty embarrassing, especially under the armpits of light or white shirts. However difficult those inevitable sweat stains are to remove, a few aspirin tablets tossed into your washer tub can effectively remove them if you let that stained shirt soak.
6. Soothe a Bee Sting
Bee stings are painful and they can become inflamed quickly and even itch like heck as they heal. To soothe pain, redness, inflammation, and itch wet and gently massage an aspirin tablet directly over the sting for almost immediate relief.
7. Wart Eradicator
You may already know that applying duct tape over a wart can speed its eradication? Although researchers aren’t exactly sure why this works (many claim that exposing the wart to the tape glue may trigger a low-grade irritation reaction that the body’s immune system attacks and destroys), they do support aspirin as a wart remedy. By combining the duct tape home remedy with a dab of crushed aspirin onto a wart can help deteriorate and banish that embarrassing blemish even faster.
8. Flower Power Savior
Receiving a bouquet of colorful spring flowers is such a nice, but short-lived gift. However, a pinch of crushed aspirin added to the vase water of your beautiful bouquet can extend its flower power and longevity.
9. Patch Drywall
A hole in your home’s drywall always happens at the worst of times—when you’re moving out, putting up a new painting, or when you’re New Year’s Eve party gets a little out of hand (I’m looking at you Uncle Jim). However, before you rush out to the hardware store for supplies to patch that hole, consider crushing water in aspirin to make a drywall paste, and patch up holes as you would with any DIY adhesive.
10. Bye, Bye Dandruff Flakes
Those white flakes on your black blouse or sweater are certainly eye-catching—although not in the way you want them to be. Luckily, the salicylic acid in aspirin is the same active ingredient in dandruff shampoos. That means if you add 2 crushed aspirin tablets to a tablespoon of regular shampoo, it will have similar effects—to help you exfoliate dead skin and say bye, bye to embarrassing flakes.
