November 8, 2009

Clean and Repurpouse Candle jars

We all love lightning up candles, specially during the cool crisp seasons, but what happens to the glass jars after the candle has finished? If your like me, you just toss it to the recycle bin...right? Well not anymore ladies. I realized how pretty the jars are to just simply throw away. So I had to do some research (google) to find out if there was a way to clean them. I tried this method and found it easy to do.

Step 1: Take your dirty, smokey jar and remove as much wax as you can.

Step 2: Boil water in a tea kettle and let the water stand for about 10 min so that the water is not boiling hot. (I actually didn't wait for the 10 minutes and one of my jars broke, so please be careful and make sure the water is not boiling hot)

Step 3: Place a spoon inside the jar and slowly pour the hot water onto the spoon 3/4 of the way. The wax will begin to float to the top.
Take a paper towel to skim the top to gather the floating wax. Carefully remove the spoon (caution it may be hot so use a hot pad) and pour the water out. Wash with soap and warm water.

Ta Da!! Don't they look clean and pretty?

XOXO
P.S. I'm sure some of you may have already known about this, but believe it or not there are plenty of women out there who don't. I was one of them , so hopefully this will be helpful information to someone.

7 comments:

julie - eab designs said...

I've been successful at getting the wax out of glass votives, but not the blackened smoke part. did you do anything special to get the black to come off?

Kathy @ Creative Home Expressions said...

Great tip! I usually put them in the oven, upside down, on a cake or pie pan covered with aluminum foil. Just a few minutes for the wax to run down onto the foil and then I put them in the dishwasher, and throw the foil out.

www.thewhitefarmhouse2.blogspot.com said...

I didn't know about doing that. What is the purpose of the spoon though?

Lilia said...

The spoon actually conducts the heat so that the glass doesn't break. Nothing special was done to remove the black smoke, it just came off. Before I knew about this, I used to use a dry paper towel to wipe it off, most of it would come off.

dee dee said...

What a great idea! I will have to remember this. I love to reuse and repurpose just about everything! thanks for the great tip... Dee Dee

Six in One Hand said...

i did not know this....
Learn something new everyday!!!

What did you buy with your giftcard???

Angel said...

I love this. I never thought about it but i have some darling ones that are almost empty with cute lids. Perfect for holding some herbs or buttons. I'm totally going to try this.