Five Great Things You Can Do with Used Tea Bags

While it feels good to find great ways to reuse things you normally throw away, such as coffee grounds or scratch paper, you might think that it’s difficult to find a use for the tea bags you’re about to throw away once you’re done preparing your favorite beverage.

The good news is you can store them in the fridge for later, since there are a few neat ways that you can still use them after enjoying a cup of afternoon tea:

Protect your indoor garden from fungal disease

The caffeine and slight acidity in tea is just enough to keep fungal disease at bay while still being friendly to plants, and all you need to do is take a used tea bag, re-brew it, and water your plants using the tea once it’s cooled down.

Make them part of your bath

No need to splurge on expensive bath bombs! If you have a bathtub and like to take a good soak to unwind after a long day, used tea bags also make for a great substitute that’s gentle for your skin while providing a gentle fragrance for some added aromatherapy.

Add flavor to your next meal

Adding used tea bags in boiling water does a lot to infuse your food with flavors you didn’t think were possible. One example for this is by adding a used bag of jasmine tea just as the rice is about to boil.

Take the smell away from your carpets

Carpet cleaning isn’t just about vacuuming away the dust – it’s also about getting rid of the smell. The good news is you can do that without having to go to a laundry shop every time, especially when you have a busy schedule.

All you need to do is to open up several used teabags once they have dried, and scatter the contents all over the carpet and wait for a few minutes before you vacuum.

And it’s not just carpets that can you can use this on: simply spread dried tea leaves in smelly areas, like the bottom of your trash can, and wait for the smell to go away after a while.

Buffing leather shoes

Leather shoes eventually fade over time, but a great way to keep them looking like new without too much effort is by taking a damp teabag and buffing the leather surface with it.

This is because the damp tea leaves allow you to add a beautiful stain for your leather shoes that’s just as good as a shoe polisher, and this gives you more reason to stock the used tea bags in your fridge to keep your leather shoes looking good.