An Easy Tip

Things have been a bit off kilter lately, so I haven’t been able to check off as many items on my to do list as desired. However, I found a handy bit of info that I want to share. Yet again I’ll be praising the ol’ bottle of plain vinegar once again.

I did a massive cleaning of my supplies cabinet recently and found a bunch of jars that were waiting for me to find homes and purposes for. Some had residue from temporarily holding batches of bath teas and such to be packaged into their bags, while others had started looking weird before I got around to using them to hold product, and I’m ashamed to admit that I had a sink full of these jars when I finished the cabinet. I decided that I wanted to get what labels I could off of them and then try my hand at some mod podge over tissue paper. (Drat you Pinterest for making me feel all crafty and creative. I have enough things that need to be done all ready! I really need to focus on the big things instead of sprucing up some jars. That will make them pretty jars though. Let’s pin that to try out later…) *grin* Since I’m so picky and a (*cough* retentive) perfectionist, I knew I’d get irritated over the residue that I inevitably still have after scrubbing and peeling labels, so I hit Pinterest for some tips from the crafty folks.

Unfortunately I was a little skeptical and didn’t plan to be so excited that I’d blog about this, so I don’t have before pictures. You’re imaginative, so I’m sure you can picture dusty, sticky, and oily jars. Lol. The little jars also had a really weird look to them now, like they had started to brown and develop imperfections in the glass, and it didn’t wash off.

I read several pins that talked about removing labels and gunk off of glass jars, although admittedly I focused more on the natural ingredient ones, mostly because I’ll toss my cookies if I smell bleach and my nails will break off if I play with acetone.

I found three that all talked about soaking jars in really hot water with your preferred standard dish soap (don’t use your “good” stuff that moisturizes your hands and all that stuff. We’re talking about using a plain old degreasing formula here.) and then add some vinegar. Of course the ratios varied impressively (it’s kind of funny how I find trivial things so impressive, but such a difference in opinion gets me all wound up, I guess. *grin*), so I decided to use the grand “whew, we’re starting to smell like I’m pickling, so I think that’s enough” measurement. (Maybe I should be embarrassed by my measuring technique. Hmmm. Nope. Lol.) I used the Bleach Alternative Dawn and probably a cup of vinegar to a sink full of jars and hot water. Then I decided that if it might work in twenty minutes, as most of every version I read did, then I could play on the computer for two hours safely. (I work hard to justify my escapes from reality. Just go with it. *teasing wink*)

Although the bubbles had dissolved and the water was cool, I saw the remains of the labels still stuck on the jars, so I decided to poke at one to see how disappointed I should be. Umm…the tip of my finger, not my nail mind you, pushed the label completely off without any force. Dude. Okay, I was impressed all ready, but figured I wasn’t going to do a happy dance because the usual residue was probably just waiting for me to touch and get all grossed out by. When I rubbed my finger across the spot and nothing happened I’m pretty sure my eyebrow nearly climbed into my hair line. No joke, every label rubbed off with absolutely no force and the few spots that looked like leftover adhesive rubbed right off. After an extra light wash with dish soap I set them to air dry and was astonished by how nice they looked. Somehow this little bath with a mild, natural, acid and my normal dish soap made these jars shine better than they had when I bought them! I mean, look how nice these look…

If you have an embarrassing collection of “I’ll get to it later” jars I recommend trying out this super easy method. I’ve been using vinegar for the base in my household cleaner for weeks now, plus am still enjoying it as a fabric softener, and now I’m tickled to have found yet another way for it to make things easier. So put away the rubber gloves and close that window, because we can now pamper ourselves naturally by having a lot less work. 😉