Do you save jars and bottles to use for storage? If you don't, you either don't need to read this or you might consider reading it to see whether or not this is something that might work for you in the future.
Just to get things rolling, the reason I save jars for storage is (a) I don't have to buy them, (b) I can send food home with guests in containers they don't have to return, and (c) I can take food and beverages to other people's houses and leave the containers. There's just not much worse for me than to say, I want my containers back. People either forget and they feel guilty or I feel resentful that I now have to pay money to replace them or both of the above.
Some jars have those thin lids, found frequently on jams, jellies, and pickles. They're nearly impossible to open but once washed and filled with something else, they don't usually leak. There's nothing to be done with the ones that do. I recycle those.
The other kind of jars are the ones with lids more like the ones on canning jars, frequently found on mayonnaise jars. There's a problem with those. They have a paper (recently some have a thin plastic-y kind of stuff) between the lid and the jar. When those jars are empty, the paper definitely has to be thrown away and the plastic stuff doesn't seem to last well, either. Once that liner is gone, the lid doesn't screw on tightly enough to keep liquids in.
I generally keep those jars for foods that don't need to be shaken. The real problem arose when I needed a place to store pineapple juice. I don't generally get juice in a can but that's the way it comes (sure, I know, they have it frozen and in jars but the jars are a lot more expensive and the concentrate, well, it's just not as good).
I had a perfect jug to put it in. I got honey in it from Costco. It was just a bit bigger than the contents of a large can of pineapple juice (or V-8). Of course pineapple juice has to be shaken and every time I did that I had to hold the jug over the sink and wipe it off when I was done because there was alway juice dribbling down the side.
The other day it occurred to me (sometimes it takes me a while to think of these things) that there has to be something I could use in place of the paper liners. I headed for my local craft store and asked if they had anything they could recommend, right off the top of their heads, that might be a replacement for the paper liner. The woman said the only thing she could think of was craft foam. I headed over to that and I think this might be the most amazing stuff ever invented. Yes, it's plastic, but it's a tiny bit of plastic and I will reuse that one little sheet of plastic foam for years to come.
I've already cut a couple of them for the two honey jugs I have. I'll do the same for the larger-sized lids later tonight.
Oh, there's one thing I want to mention about this. This is another thing I didn't figure out for quite a while but it really makes perfect sense when you think about it. When tracing something to cut out, in order to get it the exact size you want, be sure to cut it just inside the tracing line. It actually makes a lot of sense. After all, the line is just slightly outside of the item being traced. When I do this the item I'm cutting out is exactly the right size.
That's about it for this little, bitty discovery. Do you have others you'd like to share? I'd love to hear what you have to say about it.
Until next time...
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