I love beer. On my tenth birthday my dad gave me my first beer, knowing I would curse the bitter taste of the unfamiliar beverage. Although I once swore I would never drink that nasty stuff again, a few years later I changed my mind forever. Now I love beer. I enjoy it by itself, with food, in red cups, in frosty mugs, in glass boots, with ping-pong balls – you can consume it nearly any way. Recently I was enlightened to an entirely new dimension of beer – non-consumption based practical uses.

Beer can clean, cook, kill pests and even make your house warmer!

The worst part about throwing a party is not the fact your house is messy, sticky and smelly the next morning. For me, the worst part about cleaning up after throwing a party is finding all of those goddamn nearly full cans or cups of beer. It makes me want to time travel to the previous night so I can find the asshole who came to my house, took some of my beer, drank a sip and then left it there. No need to wish death upon the wasteful douche bag anymore! Save the beer for external use.

You can use beer to clean yourself. Add some beer to a bathtub and you have a new kind of bubble bath. Pour some beer in your hair and scrub it with shampoo. If you don’t want your hair to dry out, boil the beer beforehand to remove the alcohol. Let it cool, mix it with a little bit of shampoo and then use it as you would regular shampoo to give your hair more shine. If you don’t feel like preparing the beer shampoo yourself, you can buy some on the Internet from a few different breweries.

Having a bad hair day? Ran out of hair gel? Grab that left over Natty Light can sitting on your bathroom counter and add a few drops to those difficult hairs that are still standing up. Think of it as a Pabst pomade.

Beer’s carbonation makes it useful for more than just getting drunk. It can help calm an upset stomach, just like Sprite or any other carbonated beverage. Beer can even help loosen up a rusty bolt by breaking down rust.

Slugs and mice love beer too! Most of us don’t have much of a yard in Isla Vista, but one day when you do have a garden, you don’t want slugs ruining it. Bury a jar or bowl near your garden so the rim is just above the soil. Fill it three-fourths full with beer before night. The next morning you should find a bunch of drunk and drowned slugs. What a way to die! A similar concept works for getting rid of mice. Have a container filled three-fourths with beer in the attic or wherever the mice live. Put a piece of thin wood on the edge of the container to make a ramp. The mice will go up the ramp, jump in to drink the beer… and drown.

Lastly, cold beer can warm your apartment. Most of our landlords in Isla Vista will take advantage of us any way they can. If your landlord pays for your electricity or heat bill, chances are he has turned the thermostat pretty low for this winter. Put a frosty can of beer on the lockbox surrounding the thermostat to make it turn on the heat. The cold beer removes the heat from the lockbox, tricking it into thinking the house is colder than it is – resulting in a toasty arena for you to get toasted.

So the next time you find a can of barely-consumed beer – don’t toss it. Save it and use it to clean yourself, kill some pests or even cook. In the future, I will give you some great recipes on how to make ice cream, boil shrimp, bake bread and even roast a chicken – with beer.