I really, really, really hate it when I get Asian take-out and I forget (or they forget) to include chopsticks.  In fact, I hate that you have to specify that you want chopsticks.  I’m eating sushi or Thai or chowmein or whatever and I want to eat it with chopsticks.  I appreciate that there are people in this world that aren’t skilled with them — hell, I drop half my rice in my lap, but I still prefer to eat Asian food with chopsticks.

While popping into a Japanese market (Mitsuwa for SoCal, Jersey and Chicago people) to satisfy Mike’s craving for Pocky (I like Men’s and Coconut the best), I impulse-bought this huge bag of chopsticks by the checkout so I’d never have to be chopstick-less again.

Cut to 6 months later when I still have 300 sets of wooden chopsticks taking up space in my kitchen drawer.  So, I started thinking of different thing I could do with my surplus chopsticks. These are just some of the things I’ve come up with:

1. Coffee Stirs
   I don’t know about you, but I go through spoons like crazy.  It was worse before I started using chopsticks to stir my coffee.  One set can last you for a while — you can use them stuck together, like one big stir or you can break them apart and use them individually. If you set the stick out on a spoon rest or something to dry in between stirrings, you can get away with using the same chopsticks for a couple days — or more if you’re in a dry climate like me.
2. Toast Retrieval
   My toaster is a beast. I gobbles up everything I put in there — such as the case with many wide-slot toasters when you don’t intend to toast anything wide. My little sandwich thins get lost down there and over the years, the spring-load on the pop-up part of the toaster has gotten a bit tired. Sometimes, I have to fish my toast out, but hate sticking utensils down there, even when the toaster is unplugged. Since my “coffee stirs” are near my toaster, I once grabbed a chopstick, dug out my toast and never looked back.
3. Aquarium Habitat Adjustment
   I have fish — several, actually, all with unique bowls.  More than once I’ve positioned the plants and marbles, but after adding the water and moving the bowl, things shift and start to float up or just otherwise need adjusting.  You don’t want to dump out the water or shove your hand in there — you might disrupt the pH or stress out your fish.  A stuck-together set of chopsticks makes a nice tool to insert rather unobtrusively and tuck those plants back where you’d like them.
4. Plant Aeration
   I also have several, several plants — about 15 or so, mostly hibiscus, a tropical plant native to Southern California, Hawaii, Asia and other places with pleasant climates.  Though they are fairly hearty plants, they do require attention (though not as much as orchids) and since moving to the desert have had to make most of them houseplants. I don’t like using gardening tools indoors or slopping soil all over, so we started using chopsticks to move the soil around, aerating and allowing the water more access to the roots. It works great, doesn’t make a big mess and we can just stick the chopsticks in the soil for the next time.
5. Scraping Non-Stick Coating
   Sometimes, non-stick surfaces aren’t so non-stick — especially baking sheets. I’ve used the slanty backend of a stuck-together set of chopsticks to scrape baked-on stuff from baking sheets and frying pants. Works great, doesn’t scratch the surface or make that hideous metal-on-metal sound.
6. Drain Unclogging
   I have long hair.  In fact, I not only have long hair, I have long wavy/curly hair, which is notorious for breakage and shedding. If you have ever met me, you likely found a long, serpentine, dark brown hair on you after we parted — to remember me by.  It’s my gift to you.  It’s not a gift to my shower, which constantly needs to be unclogged. I’m usually butch enough to put on a pair of latex gloves, reach in and just grab the offending clog out, but sometimes there are clumps that go beyond the grabby area or are wound so tightly, you need to wedge something in there are drag the clog up. (Isn’t this delicious?)  Chopsticks, my people.
7. Stirring Bath Salts
   As a rule, I’m not a big fan of the super oily scrubs that require you to stir them up to use them. That’s so inconvenient. I’m not sure who thought trying to manhandle a slippery, oily jar in the shower,  open it, stir it up, find a place to set it down out of the water stream, find a place for the lid, apply it to your person and then, with oily hands, put it all back together again was a reasonable solution, but shower beauty engineering is not their strong suit.  Anyway, I always hated that little plastic scoop they make you dig out from the bottom of the jar, all the while sloshing the oil down your feet.  So I’ve just started stirring the scrub up before I get in the shower with a chopstick or I just don’t buy that kind of scrub.  But sometimes you get it as a gift or don’t realize it’s one of those until you get it home, so chopsticks help a lot.
8. Skewers
   So you’re making kabobs for dinner and you forgot to buy skewers.  Chopsticks will work, though they do displace a bit more food than a thinner skewer would. Just remember to soak them first!
9. Eating!
   I do still use chopsticks to eat.  Sometimes I eat my salads with chopsticks. It makes it a bit more of an adventure and I take more time with my food than I might otherwise. I’m kind of a fast eater. I know it’s not like, super hot for a girl to admit that and it’s not like I’m hunkered over my food like I’m a prisoner trying not to get shanked, but I do tend to hurry through my meals and don’t always appreciate them. Chopsticks requires you to slow down if you ever want the food to actually make it to your face.

So there you go:  alternate uses for that metric ton of chopsticks you may or may not have in your drawer. Mine are almost gone, but I’ll definitely be getting more.  If you have alternate uses that I haven’t mentioned (and that don’t involve lubricant or adult entertainment), I’m always looking for something new to do with them!