How To Save Candle Wax With Water

Home luxury candles oft come packed inside delightful, decorative candle jars or glasses that are a beautifully-designed treat for the optics — not merely the olfactory organ.

Tossing the lovely container subsequently burning a candle can feel like a real shame when you could make clean out the candle jar instead, reusing it for something else or keeping it to decorate a shelf or mantel.

On the Harlem Candle Company's Instagram account, we've featured several ideas on reusing and upcycling our candle glasses. For example, after cleaning out the jar you lot can repurpose your favorite candle equally a:

Drinking glass or cocktail drinking glass
Planter for small succulents or cacti
Flower vase
Pen and pencil holder
Makeup brush holder
Jar for spare change or keys

In this article and the brusque video below, we'll show you how easy it is to safely go the leftover wax out of a used candle and clean out the candle jar.

HOW TO REMOVE CANDLE WAX & Clean CANDLE JARS

Removing candle wax and cleaning the glass is something you can do at home without requiring whatever special tools.The method we'll exist showing you today is the freezer method.

There are other ways to go wax out of an old candle jar, similar melting it with a hair dryer or using boiling h2o, only we like freezing it because it's safer and more convenient. All yous need is the post-obit:

Freezer
Butter knife or spoon
Cooking oil
Newspaper towel
Dish soap
Sponge

STEP 1: FREEZE THE JAR

Prepare your candle in the freezer and leave it lone for at least 3-5 hours (preferably overnight for best results). The colder the temperature is, the meliorate.

Freezing the wax doesn't only harden it — it causes the wax to compress and loosen. When yous're done, you should be left with a big, frozen lump of wax at the lesser of the jar.

Stride 2: EXTRACT THE WAX

Using a spoon or butter knife, slowly and gently poke at the edges of the wax to loosen the frozen lump from its container.

If the wax remains stuck to the glass and refuses to loosen up, place the candle back in the freezer for another 60 minutes or two. Don't worry well-nigh over freezing it!

Once you've loosened up the edges enough, the lump of wax should be ready to come out. If you lot have a pretty sizable chunk left over, turn the jar upside down and let gravity do it's work.

You might need to give it a little shake, and if you lot're lucky, the frozen wax will pop right out.

If it doesn't come out right abroad, poke at the centre of the wax with your spoon or knife and try to pull or dig information technology out.

For any small pieces of wax that remain on the glass, use a spoon to gently scrape some of it off. If what'due south left is thinner than a fingernail, you'll be able to scrub it off in the next step.

Step 3: Wipe The Glass

Remove waxy residuum by dipping role of your paper towel into some household cooking oil and wiping the inside of the candle jar.

The oil volition assistance dissolve the remaining wax, which can then be wiped upwardly past the paper towel. (If you withal remember a bit of loftier school chemical science, wax dissolves in oil but not water because wax and oil are both nonpolar compounds)

Spend a few minutes wiping thoroughly until the inside of the drinking glass looks smoothen, then use a clean paper towel to soak up the backlog oil.

For this step, whatever blazon of oil will work — canola oil, olive oil, melted kokosnoot oil, and even babe oil. You tin also substitute the paper towel with a clean cotton ball or pad as well.

Stride four: Clean & RINSE

Now that the hard function is done, all that's left is to requite your empty candle jar a good rinse.

Apply a chip of dish soap to a sponge and gently scrub the glass to become rid of whatsoever remaining oil. Rinse thoroughly and put it on your counter to dry.

And that'due south it! Your cute, pristine candle jar has been cleaned and is set up to be reused, repurposed, or upcycled.

If you lot'd like to browse some guides or heady ideas for repurposing used candle jars, stay tuned for our upcoming article.

We'd also love to feature any cool ideas that yous come up upwards with besides — let united states of america know what you come up up with past messaging or tagging @harlemcandlecompany on Instagram!