The Salty Trick For Effortlessly Cleaning Up Dropped Eggs

If you've ever made the heroic effort of bringing all the groceries in at one time, only to drop your carton of eggs on the floor just before reaching the safety of the counter, you're not alone. Since most usual cleaning tactics are no match for raw yolks and whites, dealing with a dropped egg can deflate even the most proficient cleaners. Before futilely smearing the mess across the floor with a mop — or otherwise wasting your brand-new roll of paper towels trying to sop it up — you might try spilling a little salt on it.

While spilling salt is usually considered bad luck, if you already have a carton's worth of cracked eggs on your floor, you've probably already had your fair share. As such, spilled salt, in this particular case, proves to be much more of a remedy than a malady, as it helps dry up the spilled egg, making it easier to clean. Adding to the mess may feel counterintuitive, but to most quickly and efficiently clean up a broken egg, you'll want to start by covering it with a generous amount of table salt.

While any salt will work for this trick, you might want to use an inexpensive table salt rather than a more expensive gourmet salt. That's because if you want this cleanup method to be effective, you can't skimp. A single dropped egg typically requires ½ cup of regular table salt to clean up. Once you're confident that every bit of ooey-gooey egg white has been sufficiently covered, take a well-deserved break. While you do so, the salt will absorb the sticky mess.

If you return after 20 minutes and the egg still looks wet and runny, simply pour more salt onto the mess and wait a bit longer. What you should find, however, is that the egg and salt have combined to form a sort of crumbly, dry paste. Much more manageable now, the mess can easily be cleaned up with a paper towel or swept into a dust pan with a broom. Once all of the debris has been cleared away, use a disinfecting surface cleaner to spot-clean the area so floor-traversing pets and children are safe from any harmful bacteria.