15 Household Uses For Coffee Filters

Coffee filters can be used for more than filtering coffee. You will be amazed at the many other uses for coffee filters. These creative ideas are both money and time savers, and who doesn’t like saving money? Once you see the wide array of ideas you are sure to come up with a bunch more. Here are a few ideas for putting your coffee filters to use:

Coffee filters can be used as disposable bowls for snacks such as popcorn, chips or crackers, allowing you to save time.
You can use these filters if you run out of paper towels to clean windows, and they do an excellent job.

Heat up leftovers in the microwave and cover them with a filter. This will help keep your microwave clean.
Use coffee filters to absorb grease from greasy foods, they do the job perfectly.

Catch ice cream drips by using a coffee filter as an ice cream cone holder, it will absorb the mess.
Use like a Kleenex when you don’t have a tissue, it will get the job done when you are in a pinch.

Keep a few coffee filters in the trunk of your car, and you will be able to check the fluids with ease and avoid the mess.
Use them to clean your glasses, they actually work the best and won’t leave any lint on the lenses.

Make an air freshener by adding some baking soda and using a twist tie to secure the contents. Then put them in all the places you need to freshen up.

Use as small bowls to divide ingredients to ease the mess in the kitchen and making cleaning a breeze.
Use coffee filters to polish your shoes, this will keep them nice and shiny.

Us e them when you are packing breakable dishes, this will help protect them better than newspaper.
Use coffee filters as coffee cup covers when you are re-heating coffee to avoid any spilling or splashing. This will help keep your microwave looking its best.

You can use them to protect your counter when you are cutting vegetables, they will help make sure you are slicing the vegetables and not your counter.

Coffee filters can be used to help diffuse the brightness of the flash on your camera. This will help ensure that you get the best picture possible.

To Sum It Up

Coffee filters can be used for many things that you may never have thought of, so be sure to take advantage of all these extra household ideas, and you will indeed save time and money.

How a Coffee Maker Works

We all wake up in the morning and depend on our old friend to start our day - the coffee maker. The only effort we have to put in when wanting to enjoy a mug of coffee is to add a scoop of coffee, add the required amount of water and turn the machine on. We stand back and wait for our coffee to be ready before we can enjoy it. Think about it, have you ever stood there and tried to understand how the water gets from the compartment to the top of the machine? Have you ever wondered what that gurgling sound was? Here is what goes on inside.

If you open the top of the coffee machine, you will find the bucket that holds the water when you pour it in before the cycle starts. If you look inside, you will find a hole in the bucket's bottom, and this will become clear to you very soon. You also see a tube, and the purpose of this tube is to carry the water to the area where it drips out. The drip area is the part you see from the top that contains all the tiny holes. This is where the water arrives from the tube and then simply drips through the tiny holes.

If you turn the bucket upside down, you will see another tube and this is called the hot-water tube. This tube (tube2) connects to the black tube (tube1) that you see when looking at it from the top. Remember the hole in the bottom of the bucket mentioned earlier? Well, this is where tube2 picks up the cold water - from that hole. Also visible inside are the power cord and the on and off switch of the machine.  

Next is the heating element. This little part is what makes the water hot. The heating element is just a simple coiled wire. This is similar to filament in your standard light bulb or the element in your every morning toaster. The coil in the coffee maker is held firmly in plaster, and this makes it rugged. This element has two jobs.

* The heating element (or the coil) boils the water when it is put in the coffee maker.
* The element makes sure the coffee stays warm once the cycle is complete.

The heating element inside the coffee machine is pressed firmly against the warming plate. A heat conducting grease ensures that heat is transferred competently to the warming plate. The conducting grease is messy and is extremely difficult to get off yours hands. This grease can be found in power supplies, amplifiers - basically anything that squanders heat. 

There is a part that's not visible in a coffee maker and this is the one-way valve. This valve can either be in that hole that was mentioned earlier or it could be in the heating pipe, and this pipe is aluminum. If a coffee maker had no one-way valve, the hot water would just flow back into the bucket after trying to make its way up the tube. 

The History of Coffee Makers

Coffee has been used as a drink for well over 2000 years.  The first methods of brewing coffee were pretty crude but they have advanced greatly over the centuries.  People used to just chew the cherry that came off the coffee tree to get a stimulant effect.  Inside the cherry was the coffee bean.  Over time with experimentation, people started to roast and then grind the beans for better flavor. 

As early as the the late 1700s, coffee makers began showing up.  This made it easy for people to brew coffee and not worry about getting grounds in their cup.  This was expensive and not many people had them.  The basic design is similar to coffee pots of today.  There was a pot on the bottom with a place to put your ground coffee on the top.  This was connected to a chamber on top where you poured in your boiling water. 

People tried many different types of coffee maker throughout the years since then.  There have been percolators, vacuum coffee makers, and drip coffee makers.  Percolators use a pot over a heat source that forces the water into an upper chamber where the coffee grounds are.  The water drips through the coffee and back into the lower pot.  You know it is ready when it stops making percolating noises which are easy to hear.  Then you remove it from heat before it boils.  Vacuum coffee makers use what looks like two pots, one upside down on the other.  As it is heated, the pressure forces hot water up into the top chamber where it infuses with the ground coffee.  When you remove it from heat, the pressure is reversed and the coffee goes back to the lower pot ready to drink.  Drip coffee makers are the kind we are all used to.  Whether automatic or manual they work by dumping hot water over coffee grounds that sit in a filter.  It strains through into a pot and is ready to drink.

With the advent of electricity, coffee makers became very popular and a little cheaper.  In the early 1900s coffee makers really started to boom and by the 1970s almost everyone had a coffee maker in their home.  These were usually of the automatic drip variety as they were the easiest to use.  Todays coffee makers have many features.  They have timers that allow you to specify when you want your coffee maker to turn on, have built in grinders, storage areas, and much more.  You can buy home espresso and cappuccino machines also.  Coffee makers today range from the single cup variety to commercial units that make gallons at a time so no matter what your need, you can usually find it.

As more and more people start to enjoy different kinds of coffee, coffee makers become easier to use and offer more features.  Many combine espresso, cappuccino, and coffee all in one machine but it is rather bulky still.  Look for these to shrink in the near future.