Five surprising uses for ketchup

[Skhilled]

Shine your copper

Whether you have copper-bottomed cooking pans, architectural detailing, or shiny knick-knacks, forget mucking about with costly and potentially toxic metal polish pastes. Why not use some of those old ketchup packets stashed away in your kitchen drawers?

Here's a very simple recipe from Michael de Jong, TDG's Zen Cleaner and author of the Clean series of simple living books:

Massage ketchup over the copper and watch it dissolve the tarnish away (thanks to the acid). In the event that you have stubborn spots, add a pinch of table salt while you polish.

Get those auto parts gleaming

According to The Cymbal Book by Hugo Pinksterboer, some folks have seen decent results getting their cars to shine by rubbing with ketchup. The book notes that the condiment does a good job cutting tarnish, but not so well in removing dirt. Sounds like you may need a multi-step process, with some soap and water as well.

Give it a try and let us know if it works for you.

Fight Skunk Odors

If you've lived in a rural or even suburban part of North America, chances are you may have had a run-in with a skunk one night or evening. Or perhaps your dog has. Although some experts have cautioned that the technique may not actually work well (beyond a masking sensation), many people still swear by tomato juice as a way to remove potent skunk odor. Michael de Jong points out that in the event you don't have any tomato juice on hand you can try using plain ketchup instead.

Get back prettier hair from chlorine damage

According to de Jong, ketchup can also be used to correct limey-hair-highlights-gone-green, which can sometimes occur from exposure to chlorine found in swimming pools (another good reason to check out natural pools as a refreshing alternative).

How? Restore your normal hair color -- or at least the one you paid dearly for -- by applying full strength ketchup to your hair. Smoosh it in, let it linger for about 20 minutes and then wash it out thoroughly.

Soothe wounds

Unused ketchup packets pile up across America by the millions, as hurried diners and service staff often grab huge handfuls, only to end up using a few. Lisa posted over on Seacoast Online that she freezes leftover ketchup and soy sauce packets to use on her children's "small booboos and bumps." She claims, "The kids LOVE them." Apparently even the mere appearance of the packets often makes their hurts go away.

[Ken.]

Another good one.   

[allkvinde]

Have to admit that I have not used Ketchup for much at all, not even really eating.

I have though tried ketchup for skunk odor. Also tried the good old tomato juice but none worked. Could be that the dog just got way too close to the skunk.

What did work though was good old fashioned dish detergent. Sunlight did the trick really well. Once the ketchup and tomato did not work I had to find something that would and since skunk spray is rather oily I figured that perhaps dish detergent that is a really good grease cutter would work and it did.