Coffee grounds in my cat box!

I recently got a 60lb bag of coffee grounds for practically free and have discovered how cool they are! You can buy coffee grounds from most farm stores but they can be a bit spendy. Most coffee shops are happy to share there used grounds with folks thou for free. I picked it up originally just for our cat boxes and Im so pleased with how its been!

Our cats have been using those big bags of shredded cedar thats used for horse bedding. We switched from clay cat litter for cost reasons and health. Our home has 8 elderly cats and they were going right next to the litter boxes due to arthritis making walking on the pebbly clay litter painful. Think of walking on the beach compared to walking on a woodchipped pathway. We used pine for a spell but I found out I'm allergic to pines so we moved onto the cedar. To keep it smelling good I was emptying the boxes every other day, well... theoretically. It has not been completely sustainable cleaning 9 cat boxes everyother day. So I added coffee grounds in about a 1 part coffee to 5 parts cedar bedding ratio as a hope of keeping it smelling good if I miss a day. Iv been cleaning them like normal until now, we had to leave the house for a few days. With so many cats when routine is broken it gets stinky quick. But there was NO smell when we came back!!! Pet owners will get that when you come back to your house after a break, your nose picks up any pet smell you become blind to. I had resigned myself to just that's how it is. I did some research and found out that coffee is a deodorizer. We can go 5 days now without having to clean litter boxes and its kind of magical! I have time for so many more things, like reading permies!

Other uses wev found for coffee grounds

Degreaser on cabinets and sinks
Cleaning your hands after they are greasy from changing the oil in the car
Sprinkled onto the carpets to deodorize them  
We used coffee grounds to dye my wedding dress a nice light creamy coffee color
Fridge and freezer deodorizer instead of baking soda


I hope this is useful for any other folks living with pets, children, people or other sources of odd smells and unexplainable messes. And let me know if theres anything else we should try out with our bounty of coffee grounds besides sprinkling on the plants.

Add gentle exfoliant to your list. It's great for your skin and with the massage required to use it for exfoliating, it also promotes lymph drainage.

It also works on hands, one, elbows and feet

Sam Potter wrote:I did some research and found out that coffee is a deodorizer. We can go 5 days now without having to clean litter boxes and its kind of magical!

Have to ask -- because cats clean their paws. Have you noticed any unusually bouncy or jittery behaviour recently?

I kid, I kid.

Carla Burke wrote:Add gentle exfoliant to your list. It's great for your skin and with the massage required to use it for exfoliating, it also promotes lymph drainage.

I'll have to try this on my face after I use sunscreen. Doctor's orders, so I use it but it's horrible stuff. Clogs my pores and it's really tough to clean off -- I can feel the effects the next day. Bleah.

Try it on your whole body, if you want to go for that lymph drainage - not a bad thing for all of us, really.

Coffee grounds are a unique resource, partly because they are semi-sterile as a result of making the coffee with steam or boiling water.  Thus when fresh they make a good substrate for growing certain mushrooms.  Other than that they are also an excellent food for black soldier flies....I've often gotten bunches of them from coffee shops and then sun-dried them for later use for this purpose.  Both of these ideas are more valuable when they are available in bulk, such as if you are near enough to a town with coffee shops.