The late comedian Mitch Hedberg had a great line about rice: Rice is great if you’re really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something.

Ah, rice – such a wonderfood! Check out these other household uses for rice:

• Ever drop your cellphone in a toilet, snowbank or puddle? Apparently, rice can help dry it out! Bury it in a bowl of rice – that will help dry it out because the rice wicks away the moisture!
•  Put rice to work doing dishes. You can use rice to get at those hard-to-reach bottoms of narrow-necked things like: flower vases. Simply add rice, soap, water, and then shake-shake-swirl. The rice becomes your scouring pad!
• Add it to all your salt shakers – if it’s humid, the salt will clump together –  A pinch of rice will suck up moisture.
• Make an easy heating pad. Fill an old sock with a couple cups of rice, and then tie up the end. Pop it in the microwave. If you’re cool with old socks in the microwave, that is.
• Clean your coffee grinder! If, like me – you use your coffee grinder to grind other stuff – you know that bits of coffee and come out in whatever else you’re grinding! Annoying! Wipe the grinder as clean as you can and add enough rice to cover the blades. Then, grind-grind-grind, and the rice will absorb all the lingering oils that carry the smell of coffee.

Rice! Not just for gittin’ yer eat on, anymore.