Today we are sharing some seriously awesome things to do with leftover lemons you wouldn’t expect!

Lemons are the coolest, most versatile food I think there is.

I developed my love for lemons many years ago when I first got married and moved to southern California. We bought a tiny lemon tree for my balcony, and with the amazing climate, it produced huge, juicy, healthy lemons. I had lemons running out my ears!

This is when I started using them for various things, but there was only so many things I could cook and bake with lemons.

This is when I realized there are so many fascinating things to do with lemons before they go bad.

Let’s get started!

Awesome Things To Do With Leftover Lemons You Wouldn’t Expect

What can you do with excess lemons? If you have purchased lemons for the lemon juice, don’t throw away the peels. Use them for something unique! Did you just use  a few teaspoons of lemon juice. Save the rest for one of these tips! The possibilities are endless, but here are my favorite things use them for.

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1. Make Lemon Infused Rubbing Alcohol

Peel the rinds from lemons and create one of our most popular posts to date on Chemistry Cachet. This lemon infused rubbing alcohol is the coolest cleaner and can be used in many different homemade cleaners too. Read the post for more details.

2. Create An Easy Room Spray

Lemons show up again in this super easy DIY room spray recipe. By infusing the lemon rings into witch hazel, you get this fresh smelling spray!

3. Feed Plants With Lemon Powder

If you want a really neat, free thing to make with lemon peels, try lemon powder! Here is our tutorial on making it. Sprinkling lemon powder around plants is a great way to deter bugs, but also add in some vitamins and minerals to the soil around plants.

4. Add It To Homemade Soft Scrub

This lemon powder can also be used for cleaning. You can add some to things like our DIY soft scrub recipe. It adds an additional scent, cleaning aspect plus some scrubbing power too.

5. Make A Really Healthy Smoothie

I love adding lemon to smoothies! There are so many health benefits! Try this great lemon collagen smoothie. This is great for glowing skin too.

6. Use it on Skin

If you know how to use it right, you can actually save some lemon peels or lemon juice and safely use it on your skin for various things. We have a great blog post sharing all of the amazing benefits of lemon for your skin! Make sure you read this post thoroughly though to make sure you use the lemon properly.

7.  Make Healthier Chick-Fil-A Sauce

If you already have some lemons on hand for cooking, save a few teaspoons to make this delicious, healthier chick-fil-a sauce!

8.  Clean Your Microwave

Lemon is one of the main ingredients in our DIY microwave cleaner. The lemon enhances the vinegar in this solution, and it is magical! Save a lemon next time you buy some and try this recipe out.

9. Remove Hard Water Stains

Just like the recipe above, you can use some extra lemon juice to enhance the vinegar in this homemade recipe for hard water stains.

10. Use it For Healthy White Bean Dip

I shared this recipe years ago for healthy white bean dip, and it uses a little lemon juice and lemon zest to enhance flavor!

11. Make Chemistry Cachet’s Popular Collagen Concoction

One of our most popular posts over the years is our Collagen Concoction recipe which uses fresh lemon juice as one of the ingredients. You can save some lemon and create this drink at home for an energizing, metabolism boosting, inflammation fighting recipe!

12.  Create Homemade Fresh Cut Flower Food

Save a few tablespoons of lemon juice for this cool fresh cut flower food. This recipe is so easy and cheap to make, but the lemon juice really makes it work great. It also uses that lemon powder we talked about earlier.

13.  Clean Patio Furniture With Leftover Lemon

Did you read this tip many years ago? I still love doing this when I have some extra lemons on hand! You can mix up water, soap, and lemon to clean outdoor furniture. Read more in this post!

14.  Add a Few Extra Lemon Slices To Dishwasher

Heated lemon slices in the dishwasher not only neutralize odors, but they also freshens the dishwasher and will make your entire kitchen smell like fresh lemon! Check out our post on simple tricks to make your home smelling amazing in minutes. This tip is the second one on the list 🙂

15.  Make a Delicious Vintage Sparkling Green Tea

One of the first recipes we posted way back, but still a fun recipe to make with some excess lemon juice. You can find the details here.

16. Try Some Extra Lemon Zest in a Gluten Free Mix

Do you like to use gluten-free baking mixes? Jazz it up with some lemon zest! Save a little lemon from one of these projects, then use it for a mix. Read more about that in our post about gluten-free baking mixes. You can use this for any baking mix to bring out the flavors!

17. Frozen Pink Lemonade Recipe Using a Whole Lemon

This neat frozen pink lemonade recipe using the whole lemon, not just the juice!  It makes it very lemony and healthy. We shared this recipe in 2015, and it is still one of my favorite treats to make!

Can You Swap Lemon Peels for Orange or Lime Peels?

When it comes to the health aspect, you can swap orange or lime peels. It will provide a different flavor, and I have found lime to not be good. For the baking, it is best to keep it lemon. Lemons are proven to be very beneficial for your health though, so I still recommend using lemons over the others.

For the cleaning aspect, I wouldn’t switch out another citrus. Lemons have the lowest pH, so they are going to be the best for cleaning. Many readers have asked if they can use orange in the place of lemon for cleaning when they can’t find lemons. You can, but it just isn’t as strong, so keep that in mind!

Do I Need To Use Organic Lemons For These Recipes?

Another common question from readers is using organic vs non-organic. For any of our tips dealing with food or health, it is best to use organic. Since we are utilizing both the peel and the juice, organic is best to avoid added pesticides and chemicals. If you are only using the juice, I would say either one is good. For cleaning, you can use either one too since it is not being ingested 🙂 I always buy a bag of organic lemons because it is affordable, and I can use them for anything!

Can I Freeze Lemons?

We have had a few readers asking about this too, so I wanted to address it in our post. Yes you can! You can freeze the entire lemon or freeze it in slices. Glad has a good how to post to read.

I hope you enjoyed this post! This has been 6 years in the making, but it was time to round up our all-time favorite uses for the incredible lemon!

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