HOW TO: Easily Remove Spare Wax from Your Candle Jar!

Hey everyone!

 I'm quite the fan of simple life hacks to solve problems like storage or even just for decorative purposes to add that little touch to your home. For a long time, I've seen candle jars, jam jars and various other food storage containers used for a whole host of different uses. When you think about it, (with glass containers in particular) we are throwing away things that with a little work can actually be quite useful. 

I recently finished burning one of my jar candles - or rather, the wick ran out but the wax didn't. So, I was left with a wick-less candle and still quite a bit of wax left. I decided to clean out and use the jar and looked for a wax to easily remove the wax from it. In this post, I thought I'd share how I did that, what you can do with that spare wax and what to use your clean new jar for!

Removing the Wax:

I looked at several ways of doing this on Youtube and eventually found a technique that seemed pretty straightforward. Whilst I changed the technique a little, I still followed the basic idea. All you need is boiling water - just boil your kettle and fill up the jar with the water. You'll then notice little beads of wax rising up to the surface of the water and the idea is that all the wax will eventually rise to the top. Then, you just wait overnight for the wax to have set and the water to cool so you can simply pick it out!

It's a good technique when you think about it, but I had a little bit of trouble with this technique. Firstly, my water gradually cooled and so the wax wasn't really rising to the surface anymore. Secondly, I'm really quite impatient! I noticed that the hot water itself had actually dislodged the whole of the wax from the bottom anyway. So, what I did was grab something sharp like a knife (BE CAREFUL if you're doing this and if you're not an adult, get one to do it for you please!) and covered  the jar with an oven glove or folded up towel so I could touch it and I simply used the knife to stab and pull up the wax from the jar. It came out it practically one piece and I didn't have to wait for hours! Yay!  

Cleaning and Using the Jar:

Set aside your wax on a plate or a cool surface before cleaning the jar. You'll notice of course that some wax did rise to the top of the water so you'll need to spoon that out onto a plate - the wax will then cool and you can simply peal it off. Carefully, pour the remaining water down the sink and begin to clean the jar using warm water and soap! The wax should clean away easily from the jar and the heat of the water should allow for things like stickers and labels to peal away too!

Now, what exactly are you to do with your empty and clean jar? 

Well, it's really endless what you can use it for. Practically anything you can think of that will fit in that jar can be stored in it. For me, I chose to put hair bobbles and bobby pins in mine for easy access. Perhaps you could put your favourite lipsticks in it or maybe some some cotton pads or buds for easy access in your bathroom? You could even fill the jar with some decorate stones or marbles and use it to store your makeup brushes in.

Don't Forget that Wax...

Don't throw that wax away! Simply crumble it up into little pieces and just use it in a wax burner! Just as you place a wax tart or scented oils, you can do the same with your wax and place it on top of your burner for it to melt and make your room smell beautiful. This is a great way to really use up your candles and get the most out of them.

You can find a wax burner from all sorts of places such as home stores, supermarkets and even your local pound shop!

That's pretty much it for this post, really. I hope you found this post useful and interesting - let me know if you like this sort of thing and I'll put my DIY thinking cap on more often.

Thank you for reading!