Do you love candles as much as I do? Of course you do! Do you want to know what I love best about a candle? The jar. Yup, its' true. That glass jar that houses that awesome smelling candle you burn daily can be useful even after all your wax melts! Pretty cool, huh?
Today, I will show you how I repurposed my candle jars and 6 other ways you can to try to reuse candle jars around your home or office!
How to Properly Clean Candle Jars
In order to reuse your candle jars, you first have to properly clean them. This is the super easy way I remove the wax and clean my jars:
1. When your candle is all out of burning time, put it in the freezer overnight.
2. The next morning, take a butter knife and run it around the edges. The wax should come loose easily; but as you can see this wax in particular was a bit stubborn. I had to dig into the middle section of the wax for it to eventually come loose.
Once you remove all the wax, you will be left with a grimy candle jar that looks like this:
4. But after you clean it with hot water and soap you will have this clean and sparkling beauty:
Tip: If you have stubborn areas that won't give up the wax residue, simply take a cotton ball with some alcohol and rub away! This always does the trick for me!
Now you have a clean jar to repurpose as you see fit!
What to Do with Empty Candle Jars
Here are some of the best ways for you to reuse the candle jars:
Using as Cotton & Q-Tip Holders
The first is my favorite: As cotton and Q-Tip holders for the bathroom!
Check out the before & after:
All I did was clean out the jars (demonstrated towards end of this post), added some knobs to the lids and spray painted the knobs and lids with a silver metallic.
Easy enough, right? Yeah!
Use Them as Brush Holder
The second way I use my candle jars is as a brush holder:
After cleaning the jar, I just filled it with some pebbles to keep my brushes in place! And there's no need to do anything to the lid!
Use Candle Jars as Small Vases
Another great idea to make use of candle jars is to use them as small flower vases.
You can either just go to your garden and cut some fresh flowers or you can actually go and plant some flowers and use them as small plant pots.
If you go for the first option, then you just fill the jar with some water and cut the flowers really short. This will work well especially around the Spring season since the flowers start to bloom and look better.
If you go for the small plant pots approach, then first you have to make sure that the jar is actually cleaned very well before planting any flower.
After you make sure it is fully cleaned from any candle residue, you are good to start planting.
What I like most when I reuse candle jars as plant pots is that you can see through the glass and admire the different layers of stone, soil and moss you use.
So, feel free to do some research and create interesting and nice looking layers of soil, so they look better when you place them on top of your desk.
If you don’t like the see-through design, you can actually purchase some wallpaper and stick it around the jar, to create the design you like.
I personally like the see-through design. You can see the plant and what is going under. Also, a layer of small stones on the bottom of the jar will allow the water to drain easily and actually make the container look nicer.
Using Candle Jars as Desk Storage
Another very useful idea of repurposing candle jars is to use them as desk storage.
They are very useful for holding and organizing all your desk tools, especially for taller items like pens, pencils, scissors etc.
This way, it is easier for you to find any item you are looking for and your desk will look much cleaner and organized.
Use them for Pet Treats
Your pet treats actually deserve a nice container to store.
For this repurpose, it is better to use a candle jar with a lid, since it will keep the treats better and protected from any dirt or other residues.
Fill the jar with your furry friend’s favorite treats and place it on an easy-to-reach location, so you won’t need to go all the way to the container every time you need to give your pet a treat.
Using Them as Bathroom Tool Storage
Another very useful use of candle jars is to use as bathroom tool storage.
The best jars for this hack would be the taller models, since toothbrushes and toothpaste are in tall and thin shapes.
They will make a great toothbrush and toothpaste holder and in addition to that, you can fill it with a mix of water and vinegar every once in a while to give them a nice cleaning.
Using them as Spare Change Holder
Place an empty candle jar by the front door or on your dresser and drop any spare change you have at the end of the day. This way, you will end up not losing any coin and at the end of each month, you can collect them and put them in your savings to buy yourself a little treat.
Other Uses for Candle Jars
- You can store pasta or other dry goods.
- Lipstick/Lipgloss holder (pretty much anything makeup holder)
- You can use the smaller jars to store bobby pins or hair ties.
- Craft storage for buttons, ribbons, pins..
- For storing candy
- Money saving jar
And I'm sure you can think of so many more ways to use these! The possibilities are quite endless!
What items do you like to repurpose? If you have any other hack in mind, feel free to share it in the comment section down below.
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For this repurpose, it is better to use a candle jar with a lid, since it will keep the treats better and protected from any dirt or other residues.