What do you use Vaseline for?

YES. Tiny cuts.

You know when you get a paper cut or similar, (not a scratch, a clean cut) and it stings and is really irritating, but it's not deep enough to bleed much if at all?

Whack some vaseline on it. You block the air from your nerves and get instant relief.

Also use it sometimes to prevent chafing, like before a long bike ride.

Mixing Vaseline with cotton and rolling it into small balls makes for surprisingly effective firestarter. Catches fire from almost everything (even flint and steel) and the burns with strong flame for like 2 minutes.

Yes. And I'll take no further questions on the subject.

I use it around my hairline before I color my hair so as not to stain my skin.

I know a girl who thinks of ghosts. She'll make you breakfast; she'll make you toast. But she don't use butter. And she don't use cheese. She don't use jelly, or any of these.

She uses Vaseline.

Vaseline.

I use it in my nose after a nosebleed and put it on popsicle sticks to put in houseplants to be a sticky trap for flying pests

When I get a cut on my hands and they are very dry my skin heals over the wound, but the wound still stays there. Callouses just kind of grow over it and it gets painful and shitty. I put a glob of Vaseline on it and cover it with a bandaid or something and I a few days it's back to normal.

Oh.... You know. Hehehe

Vaseline is just a petrolatum jelly and a lot of creams and moisturisers have this as a component. The problem with Vaseline is that it’s basically pure petrolatum and so blocks the skin completely.

You rarely want to block the skin completely. The uses some other people noted, like stopping bleeding, is one of those uses.

The truth is that I rarely recommend Vaseline because of how limited it is on skin use.

I recommend people look into Aquaphor by Eucerin, which is only about 40% petrolatum and moisturises a bit better. I always travel with a very small container (just a tiny bit) of the stuff. It’s useful if you have any skin conditions (flaked skin, rashes, etc) that you might want to deal with pronto.

Aveeno (a very good brand for skincare) also make very similar heavy creams.

Long story short, no, Vaseline is pretty bad choice for skincare because it just blocks all air exchange. There are better choices. You often do want petrolatum…just not 100%.

Source: lifelong eczema issues

I play sports and always put it on my heels before switching into cleats. Prevents blisters. Works with new shoes too, while you break them in.

When my siblings and I were young we would occasionally get eczema flair ups on our hands. Whenever this happened my mom would fill a sock with Vaseline and have us wear it on our hands to bed. Kinda funny.

I use medical petroleum jelly on my carbon steel stuffs to prevent them from rust. I think it works better than WD40, and I don't have to protect my hands while applying it.

And sometimes I mix it with bee wax as wood oil. I think it works.

I know what your great great grandma used it for

I use it when casting my patients who have a partial hand amputation. It works great as a separator for casting agents and allows me to easily easily slip a cast off of them. It also helps prevent ripping out too too many hairs during the process.

My great aunt used to cook with it. By far the weirdest spaghetti Ive ever eaten. 0/10 do not recommend.

I use it kind of like WD-40 in a farm setting. It's messy, but not as messy as grease. It's effective to coat things that constantly wear and have started to rust. I also rub it on my leather boots to waterproof it for cheap.

Yeah, I use it to wipe on my nose when I'm sick or my allergies are bad. It helps prevent it from getting all dried out from the tissues! I also rib a little on my hands sometime#, it goes a long way as a moisturizer. In summer I rub some between my toes if they get dried out.

I slather it on my face before bed as a mask. Works great to fight acne imo

Lubricating the cork in a saxophone neck or a clarinet tenon. It turned out to be not a good idea at all, since the Vaseline speaks into the cork and dissolves the glue holding the cork to the instrument. But until then it does a great job.

I’ve seen it used on Cinema Camera filters to make funky reflections in the lens.

We were filming a dream sequence and to make the edges of the image soft and blurry, we used an optical flat (a clear filters basically a piece of clear glass that slides in front of the camera’s lens) and the DP (director of Photography, aka the Cinematographer) smeared some Vaseline over the edges of the flat, painting the blurry edges with his finger. It worked really nicely, unfortunately I can’t find the final video online to show the result.

It's good for knuckles that crack and bleed in the winter. Lotion isn't really good enough unless you're applying it multiple times a day.

Heat vaseline in a small container or on a spoon
Suck up into syringe
Inject liberally into ~~veins~~ switches, connectors, and other electronic moving parts that I'd like to be waterproof. (0. Cover PCB in nail polish or specially-made products)

I use it to lubricate machine parts at times. Also good coating for rust protection like the sockets of outdoor bulbs or tools in storage. There's better products for skin protection. Years ago it was commonly used for infant diaper rash, but again there's better products for that now. I don't think I've ever used it on my body, it's made from petroleum so it's really just highly refined axle grease.

I use it on my baby's chin to prevent dribble rash.

Nipple fissures
Dry nipples
Runner's rash

I'm beginning to think I have fragile nipples...

I haven't used it since I was a teenager 😂

If you are wounded it's great to apply on your skin

Lubricating the O ring that sits inside the watch case of vintage divers watches to keep them waterproof.

It’s good to put around your eyebrows when you’re tinting them, so you don’t stain the skin or any invisible hair.

Also good for putting on nail polish, for similar reasons.

I get super dry skin in winter, especially on my hands where my skin can even start to crack and bleed. Vaseline works wonders.

When i see to much i put it in my eyes

I use it to search for things that you can't see.

Masturbate

I use it on the threads of plastic filter housings in my engine room. It's keeps the salt water from seizing them.

I like putting vaseline on my lips overnight (it's best to apply it on damp lips)

I use it as anti-seize for RF connectors. It allows cables to connect to antennas without getting stuck, even if left like that for years in maritime environments.

EDIT: Just make sure the vasseline is neutral and not (even slightly) acidic. Otherwise it'll cause corrosion.

I used some around my nose when I caught a nasty cold and I couldn't stop blowing my nose. It helped with the pain.

Creating silicone dice molds for resin casting. The vaseline acts as a mold release

I was going to use it to lubricate keyboard switches but it turns out that it's bad for plastics.

The ointment for my overnight dry eyes is half petroleum jelly half mineral oil. I can and have used Vaseline (which is almost entirely petroleum jelly) in a pinch.

For evaluation talks with my employees ofcourse...

I use it on my instruments. Greasing the cork connectors on my clarinet and lubricating the tuning slide on my trumpet.

cracked skin on my soles

I use it to coat my car battery terminals.

I had an old Japanese truck, and when I replaced the oil pump you were supposed to pack the spaces around the gears of the new pump so it would pump oil. It was how you "primed" the oil pump.

I use it after cleaning the impeller on my aquarium filters. They naturally collect goop around the magnet bit of the impeller which makes them quiet, but eventually there will be too much goop and they stop spinning or make a horrible racket. If you clean it off all the way it will buzz and rattle for a while. A big blob of vaseline will quiet it down until the goop builds back up.

It's great for keeping rust off tools. Just the slightest whiff of vaseline will keep rust away for years. I tend to use a spray can of vaseline for that though, not a tub.

exzema and "slugging", ie cover feet in foot cream (or any other body part/cream type), cover that in vaseline and wear socks for a couple hours or overnight.