Saving and Repurposing Jars & How to Decant Your Food | Zero Waste Swaps
September 07, 2020
A pantry full of jars may seem like a cliché within the zero waste movement but it is so for a reason, and more than just looking great, it's an inexpensive and easy way to store your food. My small pantry is full of glass jars with grains, beans, seeds, spices and herbs, and besides it being aesthetically pleasing, it's also practical and it reduces the amount of harmful chemicals that plastic leaches into your food. If you use glass jars for pantry storage, or if you'd like to start, please don't feel as though every jar must match, you don't need to go out and spend a bunch of money on new jars, sure your pantry could look like the most perfect Pinterest pantry, but it could also look like a beautiful collection of random jars you get over time.
Even though I have a few jars that have been bought with specific things in mind, such as a bigger jar for flour and oats, most are saved from food I bought over the years, cooked beans, olives, jams, etc. Whatever I can't buy in bulk, I buy in glass jars and then keep those for future bulk shops, or even to store my homemade jams and marmelade. While I do love a new pantry jar, repurposing old food jars can work just as well and doesn’t have to cost a penny. Here’s how:
Rinse & Soak
To make sure your jars are super clean rinse them along with the lids and soak them in hot, soapy water for a few hours.
Remove the Labels
Some labels are nice and friendly and will come out just by pulling them off, those have a special place in my heart for making my life so much easier. BUT, for any of those pesty buggers that refuse to leave, what I usually do is mix together a bit of baking soda and coconut oil, apply it directly on top of the sticky residue and then rub with with a warm cloth until all the stickiness just slips away.
Something Extra
If there's any odor from whatever was in the jar before, all you need to do is soak it in vinegar for a while and it'll smell like new again. Also, if you'd like for your pantry to look somewhat more cohesive, simply paint all the lids in the same colour, an easy fix.
How to Decant your Food
Not every store allows you to take in your glass jars to fill up, in my case one of my regular stores does and the other doesn't, so what I do is take a bunch of fabric bags, more on that here, and use them to bring everything home. I made most of my bags out of old pillow cases and I also got a few from my grandma, the only ones I bought were these reusable tea bags from Mind the Trash which I use not only to brew my tea but also to bring spices home, as I tend to need much smaller quantities. You can also find these bags on Etsy, such as here from the UK, here from Malaysia, and here from Canada, depending on where you are in the world.
If your bulk store also doesn't allow you to bring your glass jars you'll need to learn now how to properly decant your food as not to waste any, so here's my number 1 tip: use a funnel!!!! If you don't, you'll find yourself pouring from your produce bags into their glass jars and missing beans and grains that jump out, herbs that float away, spices that refuse to slowly trickle down but rather throw themselves everywhere...
While I'm still living at my mum's, I use the funnel she's had for longer than she's had me, but once I move out I'll need to get my hands on some for myself. The smartest thing to do is to buy a small set that will help you in any situation. A narrow-mouth funnel may sound good for liquids but it won't help with dry goods, a wide-neck funnel would be the obvious solution as it would help with either liquids or dry goods, but what if you run into a smaller jar where it just won't fit? You'll need a smaller one for those. A set of three sounds perfect, covering most if not all situations, and you can probably get those quite easily secondhand. Here are some I'm keeping an eye out for: wide-neck funnel, Vintage Wide Mouth Canning Funnel with Detachable Base, and my personal favourite the Ceramic Canning Funnel. If you feel you have mastered the art of pouring without spilling, please don't feel as though you HAVE to buy anything, this is just what I know helps me keep any waste to a null.
You may still be wondering: "How do I know exactly how much I can buy? What if I buy a little too much and then need to use a second smaller jar to keep everything organized?" That's fine, albeit not ideal. Overtime you'll learn to buy exactly as much as you need, if you're only getting a few things and can take your jars with you do that, but that won't help you if you need to do a big shopping trip, so one thing you can do with such occasion is to have certain produce bags that hold as much as certain jars, for instance I know that my coffee jar takes exactly 500 grams, so that's how much I always buy, and one of my handmade bags holds the exact amount of quinoa I usually hold in my 300 gram jar, it's all about practice and you'll soon know exactly how much of what goes into each of your jars, just keep trying!
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