Clean your shoes with a banana skin – and three other fruity tricks

When Frugal Grandma emailed me the other day to say that you can use a banana skin to shine leather shoes, I was chowing down on a banana and it seemed like fate. Or at least, too good an opportunity to pass up. So I gave it a go.

It’s very simple:

1. Rub the inside of the banana skin over your shoes.

2. Leave it for a minute.

3. Buff the residue away with a clean cloth.

It works better than I had thought. It isn’t sticky – and heck, banana smells better than waxy shoe polish.

Conclusion: bananas are magic! I had a look around for other banana-y success stories, and discovered a fair few. Here are my favourites:

1. Clean a CD and repair minor scratches with a banana skin

2. Turn banana skins into fertilizer for houseplants.

A commenter on this post provides the following recipe:

i) Put the skin in a big jar and cover with water.

ii) Pour an inch or two into your watering can.

iii) Refill the jar.

She notes: “one peel will last nearly forever and, surprisingly enough, doesn’t get completely disgusting”.

3. Remove splinters with banana skins.

It sounds far-fetched, but I’ve seen this tip a few times.

From the Ask Moxie blog:

Cut a piece of the peel to cover the area of the splinter. Put the peel with the inside toward [the child’s] skin (so peel side out) and use surgical tape to tape it snug onto her skin over the splinter, and have her sleep that way. When she wakes up in the morning, the splinter will have worked its way closer to the surface (allegedly it should be lying on top of the skin, but that hasn’t happened with us–it’s just gotten close enough to the surface for me to yank it out easily)

Apparently the enzymes shift the splinter towards the surface of the skin. No, I don’t know how that works either.

If you have any banana skin tips, do share them in the comments below. I’ve come across plenty online, but some of them do sound… well, less than convincing! I’d love to hear about the ones that work.