Removing Wax from Jars

If you were wondering what this first post would be about and you guessed that it might be a collection of Pinterest reviews, you would be correct! (If you didn’t guess that this time, you might want to next time because you might just be right. J)

So, let me preface this by saying I know that I am a hoarder of craft supplies. I have actually admitted this plenty of times in the past, but it still doesn’t help get rid of all the craft supplies I have accumulated over the years (more so since being in a country where I can’t pass up a good deal!).

So with that being said, I have accumulated a ton of candle jars over the last year or so. The reason behind this came from me finding a craft project that I really wanted to do, but I lost the link to the craft project and since then have been saying that I am keeping the jars to store little things. This has come in handy with clothespins and ribbons so far, but the rest of the jars still needed a cleaning up.

With me being a pack rat, I also can’t get rid of the wax. Why buy a new candle when you can take 10 old candles, melt them down, pour them in a candle mold and have a free new candle, right? Well, that is my reasoning, but to be honest, I have not made any new candles YET. The yet comes into play because my plan is that once these candle jars are all cleaned out, I will have some extra candle jars to make new-ish candles with!

Ok, back to the blog at hand. Even after melting the candles down and mixing the waxes together, the original jar the candle in still has a little bit of wax left in it. In the past, I have spent plenty of time trying to scrub this wax out with soap and water and it just doesn’t work so I turned to my best internet friend, Pinterest to help me out. I found two different blog sites with instructions on how to get the wax out of the candle jars and I will be trying each of them and will let you know how they work out for me.

Removing Candle Wax From The Jar:

Here is the link to the first blog that I used the tips from to try to get the wax out of all of my candle jars: http://askannamoseley.com/2011/02/reader-question-how-to-remove-wax/

This link tells you to put the candles in the freezer for a while and then when you take them out the candle should be able to plop out either by just hitting the bottom of the jar or by using a knife to get around the edges so that the wax could pop out.

Here are my candles going into the freezer:

I originally put the candles in the freezer for only about an hour and a half to two hours and did not get any of the results that this blog talked about. While the wax came out with cracks in it, it did not pop out of the jar like her pictures show. Luckily, my husband was around and bored so he took a knife to the wax and got it out for me. I did find out, though, that soy candles do not like to freeze. In fact when I took them out of the freezer, they looked exactly like what they did when they went in and when I poked them with a  knife, the candle wax was still soft like when it had gone into the freezer.

I decided to go ahead and leave one of the candles in the freezer for over 12 hours, since the original blog post says to leave the candle in there for at least 12 hours. The reason mine was in there for over 12 hours is because I had put it in at 1 pm and was not about to wake up at 1 am just to pull it out of the freezer. When I pulled the candles out after 12 hours in the freezer, the wax did pop straight out after pushing on one of the edges with a plastic butter knife.

While I was waiting for the 12 hours to be done, I decided to go ahead and try one of the tips from the other site that I found regarding getting candle wax out of the jars. Here is the link to that page: http://www.yellowbrickhome.com/2012/03/08/jars-for-things/

This link tells you to pour boiling water into the candle jar and let it sit for a few hours. At the end of the few hours, you should be able to come back to the jar and all the wax will be on top of the jar for you to pull out.

I’m not gonna lie. I wasn’t really going into this thinking that this is going to work with my candles. For one thing, most of my candles have very little wax left in them because I have already taken the time to melt them on my patio (yes it gets that hot here) and combine scents to prepare for making new candles. But, for the sake of this blog and for me loving to try new things (even if they aggravate me in the end when they don’t work out), I decided to give it a go.

I forgot to take a picture of the candles before pouring the water into them and was going to take pictures when the wax had moved to the top, but the husband and I were both so impatient that we hurried and took the wax out without even thinking about grabbing the camera.

So I guess I shouldn’t have gone into this thinking that the boiling water would not work. As you can see in my picture, the majority of the wax did float up to the top of the jar. Some of the wax at the bottom (since there was a ton of wax left in the jar) did not float to the top, but it was very easy to get off by running a butter knife (disposable ones are the best for this, I might add) around the edge of the wax. The wax literally lifted right up and then it was very easy to pull the wick out of the wax.

Ultimately, both tips work great, but I would suggest the boiling water tip if you are in more of a hurry. The candle trick is great if you have 12+ hours to leave it in the freezer, but sometimes there are crafts that I find that I want to get done right away!

Now, you can clean the jars and find really cute craft or storage projects to do with them. Tip for cleaning the jars, when you take the label off of the outside, if there is still sticky residue; pour a little vegetable oil on the jar and then scrub with a brillo pad. The vegetable oil will help lift up this sticky residue and will make it a lot easier on you to get the label removed.

(I apologize for the lack of pictures in this post, but luckily for you, the other blog posts have pictures to explain everything as well. I will work much harder on remembering to pull out the camera when working on a project.)

Stay tuned for an upcoming blog post where I show you what I did with all my empty glass containers.