Eight surprising uses for foil you need to know about!

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These clever household uses will tap into the true potential of this store cupboard staple!

Kitchen foil has been a staple of our kitchens since the 1940s, and we love it for its versatility!

Wrapping up your lunch, steaming fish in the oven, helping you iron quicker... there's not much you can't use it for.

As well as the kitchen uses we're all familiar with, here are 12 more unusual ways you can use aliminium foil around the house.

To sharpen up your old blunt scissors, fold clean strips of foil into several layers and start cutting. The more you cut the sharper the scissors become. Seven or eight goes should do the trick.

When you’re painting a door, foil is great for wrapping doorknobs to keep paint off them. Scrunch a couple of layers of foil over the door knob and cut off the excess at the base. That way you can paint right up to the edge of the knob.

To remove a pie more easily from the tin, fold a wide strip of foil, slightly larger than the tin, in half along its length and place in the tin before lining with pastry. Once cooked, lift out the pie using the foil handles.

To ensure your matches light every time, wrap them in foil to keep them from getting damp or wet on camping trips.

To keep birds away from your veg patch and fruit trees, hang shiny strips of foil from a length of garden twine.

Cut foil to the correct size and use it to line the bottom of cabinets and drawers for a wipe-clean surface that can be easily replaced. The foil also reflects light into those hard-to-see corners of cupboards, so you won't be blindly fumbling for a plastic lid anymore!

Scrunch foil into a ball to create a homemade scourer that's perfect for removing burnt-on food residue from a barbecue grill. Once the grill has cooled, use the ball of foil to scrub away charred food then wash the grill in warm, soapy water.

If you haven't got any steel wool to help you clean tough food residue on dishes, use a ball of foil to give them a good scrub. Remember, it's fine to use on glass and cast-iron, but don't use it on non-stick surfaces.

For an eco-friendly way to keep silverware sparkling, line a plastic container with foil (shiny-side up). Fill the container with boiling water, and add baking soda (roughly 2tbsp in a litre of water).

Gently drop in the silver you want to clean and leave it for a few minutes. You will see bubbling and fizzing as the tarnish begins to lift. When you remove the silver, remember it will be hot, so take precautions! Rinse under a tap, dry and buff with a soft cloth. If the silver is heavily tarnished, you may need to repeat the process.

Store freshly cleaned silverware on top of a sheet of aluminium foil to slow down the tarnishing process.

GHI Tip: You should only use this method to clean sterling silver objects, such as cutlery. Never put silver objects that include porous materials, such as turquoise or pearl, in the solution, or silver items that are held together by glue, as the glue can be corroded by the solution.

Moving heavy furniture around the house can be difficult, but you can make the job easier in carpeted rooms using foil.

First, lift each corner of the piece of furniture you want to move in turn just enough to wrap the feet in a few layers of foil (you might need someone to help you do this). The foil should mean it takes less elbow grease to scoot the furniture across carpet (don't forget to remove the foil afterwards!).

You should only use this trick on carpet as foil could scratch hard floors.

Place foil underneath your ironing board cover, shiny-side up to reflect heat from the iron back onto the underside of whatever you're ironing. This should make it easier to iron out stubborn creases, and cut the time you spend ironing.

As moisture can potentially build up on the foil after you’ve ironed, try to get into the habit of removing the foil layer to allow it and the ironing board cover to dry.

Muscovado sugar can be a pain to use when it clumps into large chunks. To crumble it quickly, place a lump into a piece of foil and heat in a high-temperature oven for 5 minutes. Place the wrapped brown sugar on a baking sheet just in case there are any spills. Remember to use oven gloves when removing it from the oven, to avoid burnt fingers.

A green alternative to cling-film, clean aluminium foil can be recycled alongside other metal items. Scrunch kitchen foil, tub and pot lids and wrappers together to form a ball — the bigger the ball, the easier it is to recycle.

Use the Recycle Now postcode search to check whether foil is accepted by your local authority in kerbside collections. If it's not, the postcode search will also tell you the location of your nearest foil recycling bank.

GHI Tip: Do the scrunch test to check whether your shiny wrapper is aluminium foil or plastic film: scrunch the wrapper in your hand, and if it springs back open it’s not recyclable foil.

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