Why You Should Bring A Cucumber With You On Your Next Trip To The Shower

Organizing a night out with your friends is all fun and games until you find yourself with only a few minutes left on the clock to get ready. Now you're hopping out of the shower in a rush only to find that your mirror is all fogged up. If you don't have a bathroom exhaust fan, then you could be faced with that foggy mirror for quite some time. Instead of accepting your tardiness as fate, take a sliced cucumber with you to the shower next time. The word on the World Wide Web streets says that rubbing sliced cucumbers face down on mirrors helps to keep them defogged even after a hot shower.

Cucumbers being defogging fruits is mostly anecdotal, with people claiming that it works and not enough scientific evidence backing it up. However, according to ALA Insurance representative Callum Butler via Express, cucumbers do work against condensation on glass surfaces. The car expert weighed in on this when advising drivers on how to avoid foggy windshields in the colder months. "Cucumber contains natural oils which create a hydrophobic surface when rubbed on glass or mirrors," he explained. "The water-repellent properties of cucumber help to stop your windshield from condensing and forming a fog." 

Despite being 96% water, cucumbers do contain some oils, but only in their seeds. However, their water contains a host of minerals, which could account for the film they leave on glass that defends against condensation.

During your next trip to the shower, don't hesitate to grab a cucumber from the fridge. Cut it in a longitudinal section, a vertical line down the middle, to offer yourself more surface area to work with rather than a small, transverse circular cut. Even if you're in a hurry, cool down enough to brush the entire length of your bathroom mirror with the cucumber before you get in the shower. This is because the cucumber's effects will not work on glass that is already misty.

One mistake people make when defogging their mirrors is using their fingers or a rag. Your fingers contain oils that will leave fingerprint residue behind, and rags have lint and dust on them. You also don't have to wipe the cucumber juice off with a rag or sponge because that would risk streaking the mirror. Instead, let the fruit work its magic so that you come back to a well-preserved mirror.

Another bathroom area that can benefit from the cucumber hack is your stainless steel sink faucet. That gets foggy, too, and since it has a smooth metallic surface, you can try the cucumber on it. When it comes to stainless steel faucets, cucumbers are reported to polish them and make them shiny, so you get a twofer.