Empty Jars

[Big Dave]

When you finish the jam, jelly, meat, chicken stock or what ever you have canned. What is your method of dealing with the jars. Wash them and stick them where? A box under a cabinet? How many do you use a year? Thanks for any replies.

[CaliannG]

I used to carefully wash every jar and container and neatly stow it away.

Then my cousin of 85 passed on, and we cleaned out her house. A garbage truck of neatly cleaned and stored containers...some so old that the plastic was brittle.

I thought about it, and thought of all of my clean, stowed jars, tubs, etc. Then I went home, cleaned them all out and threw them away. Now, I just toss them after they are used.

When I saved them, I used maybe a few butter bowls a year, in lieu of tupperware for food storage. It just wasn't worth the effort I was putting into it.

[Paquebot]

Originally Posted by Big Dave

When you finish the jam, jelly, meat, chicken stock or what ever you have canned. What is your method of dealing with the jars. Wash them and stick them where? A box under a cabinet? How many do you use a year? Thanks for any replies.

Go to the liquor store and look over their wine boxes. You'll find the right size boxes which will hold 24 pints very easily. Look a little harder and find some which will hold 12 quarts. With both, first in a hole is with the mouth down, second with mouth up. Half-pints are a little harder to find a suitable box but they're there. You'll have to cut them down to the height of 2 jars and put 24 in. No matter what size or how full, they can be stacked to the ceiling without collapsing as long as the dividers are in them. I even use them to store the canned goods in and then put the empty right back where it came from.

How many we use in a year depends upon how many were filled one year and how long they last until time to can more. Maybe 500 one year and 200 the next. The lower figure may seem like a lot to some while the higher number isn't even close.

Martin

[luvrulz]

I only save canning jars and when I empty one, I wash and stow away in the pantry area on a separate shelf just for empty jars.... Then, when I am canning, I know just where to look!

[Horseyrider]

Some years I put up stuff that demands a lot of quarts. Other years, a lot of wide mouth pints, regular pints, etc etc. So I have a lot more jars than I do shelf space upstairs. The clean ones are kept in their original box, upside down, with a sheet or two of newspaper on top, in an antique cupboard next to an old brick divider wall that's the outside side of my root cellar in the basement.

The bands live in an old beadboard cupboard upstairs on some things my husband made years ago for me, that look sort of like prongs on a piece of 1x4. It keeps my bands organized and easy to grab during a canning run, and I can store a lot in just a little space.

[Fire-Man]

I think Calianng missed the part about "Canned" items and was talking about other type jars and containers.

When we have a empty canning jar my wife puts them in the pantry then when she gets several we take them out to the storage building where we got the other 2000 stored. Always try to keep them in the original box when possible.

[Delrio]

I put the empty jar back in the spot where the full one used to be.

[Callieslamb]

I wash them and put the lids back on them so they stay clean - if the lid was lost, I put the ring on alone so I can protect the top of the jar from nicks. They came off of a shelf, they go back on a shelf.

[7thswan]

I stick washed jars on a shelf in the laundry room,when I get a box worth ,they get boxed up on paper towels . They are stored in my Laundry room stacked to the ceiling.
Eta: I use anywhere from 600 to over a thousand each year. I have thousands of jars and probably have 100 Blue/Teal old pint/quart/1/2 gal. that get everything from thread to herbs stored in them with zinc lids closeing them up. I'm going to guess that I hae over 4 thousand jars.

[Chucknbob]

I've got a big shelving unit in my garage full of empty jars.

Once I use a jar and empty it, it gets washed and stacked by size on that shelf. When it's canning season, I pull them off the shelf, run them through the sanitize cycle of my dishwasher and then fill them up.

[jwal10]

We have plenty of shelves. When the kids were home we used more quarts, now just the 2 of us, mostly pints. They go back on the shelf after washing, upside down. We let the kids take what they want. Daughter has canned for 6 years, Son has just started canning on his own. Last year we canned 200 quarts and 600 pints. This year not canning much, we have so much canned already. I figure 5 years worth. We don't buy much so we have very few jars and plastic to throw away. The garbage company does not recycle glass anymore, it is just trash....James

[GoldenCityMuse]

Always keep the original boxes canning jars come in. The new ones are just a bottom with the plastic over the top, but I plan on cutting some cardboard to make custom tops.

[K.B.]

Canning jars get reused on an ongoing basis. We pick up more all the time as they stack and store easily in the boxes. Since switching to Tattler lids, I seem to can more all year around. It has reduced the number of total jars that are in circulation, but we probably can more quantity now than ever.

Store-bought plastic tubs get used for leftovers or planting seedlings. Glass jars from the store are usually used for dry/dehydrated goods.

[fantasymaker]

Originally Posted by 7thswan

I'm going to guess that I hae over 4 thousand jars.

WOW! Thats like over ten a day a year! How long do you save stuff?
More importantly How are they organized?

[nc_mtn]

I had a box of odd jars in a box on our pantry shelf. Somehow, it fell, only saved one jar... pretty sad day

[Paquebot]

Originally Posted by GoldenCityMuse

Always keep the original boxes canning jars come in. The new ones are just a bottom with the plastic over the top, but I plan on cutting some cardboard to make custom tops.

That's one reason why I started using wine boxes. They can be found at just the right size for the jars and their dividers are often stronger than the original boxes. Besides, with some of our jars pushing 100 years, the original boxes were probably used to start the fire in a wood stove to do the canning 90 years ago.

Wine boxes can be used to store 24 full pints and the canned venison is currently stored that way. I've begun to cut boxes down to only the height of pint jars and double-stack them on the shelves. To get something from the bottom one requires only sliding the top one partially aside to get out a jar. If the bottom one were an original box with the flaps intact, the top box would have to be removed entirely to get a jar from the bottom box. I use heavy metal shelves from Home Depot and can triple-deck to the ceiling if I wish. That can only be done with the jars being contained in a safe manner.

Any commercial jar which comes with a pop-up lid can be used again. Since most are not standard size, they tend to be stored loose and with their caps in place. Caps stay with the jars so they don't get mixed up.

Martin

[strawberrygirl]

We store our empty canning jars on shelves in the basement. Any jars that come from the store (pasta sauce etc.) go to the recycling center along with plastic, cardboard, and newspapers.

I'm not positive, but I think we have about 300+ jars.

[7thswan]

Originally Posted by fantasymaker

WOW! Thats like over ten a day a year! How long do you save stuff?
More importantly How are they organized?

Well, I guess I'll show ya, it's not like my pic. isn't everywhere on the net. I'm not really sure how many jars are empty at any given moment,soon I'll be canning dryed beans.Here's the better one. I give stuff away and canning dosen't have to be used in one year contrary to what some say/think.

[sandsuncritters]

Actually, I LOVE this! We have thousands of jars in rotation and storage. It took decades of hard work and thrift on the part of many people I admired to accumulate those jars! A jar of something gifted comes back to me -usually empty, occasionally a gift in return. And we use them in the same manner as WIHH.

Newer glass canning jars are just not the same quality as the older ones, so the ones that come from pre-filled from a grocery store are used for dry storage or lunch boxes or some such.

Not much plastic around here, not even Tupperware. I never could understand the fascination with that stuff.

In His Love
Mich

Originally Posted by Wind in Her Hair

CallieannG- seriously- throw them away!?!?!??!!!??!

thats crazy talk. Canning jars= real money! I pay for my jars ONCE and request people to return them to me when possible and if they can't get them back to me- I ask them to please give them to some one who CANS! I have jars that are- without a doubt- over 30 years old. To me- thats the ultimate in recycling and reusing.

I wash mine, put them back in their original (or better) boxes and stack them in the pantry. In Texas, when I had no basement, I stacked those filled boxes in an alcove of a backdoor entry hall- to the ceiling. When I ran out of space there, I slid the boxes under the beds.
I use canning jars for far more than canning- u se them for everything- for storeage of odds and ends and bits and pieces, for drinking out of, for carrying soups to work for lunches, for saving space in the refrigertor - like when a gallon of milk is almost gone, seems silly to have a mostly empty gallon container taking up space when a quart jar with a lid can hold it so much better, etc.

I cannot imagine throwing out a canning jar. Even the ones with chips get repurposed for holding hard candies, dried herbs, popcorn, etc.

I do not use plastic very much at all- I avoid buying it whenever possible- so no hoarding margarine tubs (don't eat margaine) for me.

[sandsuncritters]

AWESOMENESS
You

Carry on!

In His Love
Mich