Six ways to use cotton tips you may not have known

Cotton tips are annoying little things sometimes – they always seem to be rolling around in our bathroom drawers. In actuality, these little sticks are great for other purposes than cleaning your ears (which you shouldn’t really be doing anyway) or dabbing makeup. Here are some great ways to use them.

1. Emergency supply of perfume: You might not always be able to carry around a perfume bottle, but that doesn’t mean you can’t stay smelling fresh. Instead of lugging around a bottle, lighten your load and reduce the risk of spillage by spraying a few cotton tips with your favourite fragrance, then store them in a resealable bag and keep it in your purse. When you’re ready to apply, simply swipe one across your skin (two key spots that hold onto scent well: inside of elbows or behind the knee), and then toss.

2. Jewellery organiser: Wrap your delicate necklaces and bracelets around the middle of a cotton tip, then store in a resealable bag to prevent them from getting tangled or lost.

3. Keep your furry friends clean: Cotton tips are just the right size for cleaning in between your pet’s paws, underneath nails, and around the outside of their ears. Place a dime size amount of animal-approved shampoo on one end of a cotton tip and gently clean those hard to reach places.

4. Clean up messy manicures: We’ve all had moments when, while doing a near-perfect manicure job, there’s some nail polish that escapes the borders we’re working within. Simply pour some nail polish remover into the bottle’s cap, did a cotton tip in and swipe to fix your masterpiece!

5. Clean electronics and keyboards: We use many of our electronic devices every day, yet we rarely think about cleaning them! Use a cotton tip dipped in rubbing alcohol to clean the nooks and crannies of phones, tablets, and desktop computers. They’re also great at cleaning the crevices between the keys of your keyboard.

6. Touch up paint jobs: You don’t need to haul out brushes or rollers for quick paint touchups around the house anymore, not if you have cotton tips handy! Cotton tips are the perfect tool for painting over small scuffs and scrapes.

Do you use cotton tips in any of these ways? What other tips do you have?