Beautiful Storage

First a word of caution. Glass is beautiful but not fun if it breaks. Ceramics, if available, are safer, but with an abundance of bottles that come from the grocery store that used to contain honey and the like, why not try to put them to good use? 

And not break them. 

Another challenge can be how to get the labels off of the jars you want to reuse? Not all labels are made the same. Some come off easily. Others require more effort.

As an example, what we did here was soak a nice looking bottle of mustard oil in a pot of water for about an hour to get the label off for the owner.

Then we learned the truth. It was one of those very stubborn, sticky labels that takes effort to get off.

But after encountering such labels over the years here’s some suggestions that have worked well:

After the soaking, use a stainless steel  scouring pad to scrape the outer label off, leaving the sticky glue residue still there. 

Next, dry the bottle and then rub some vegetable oil into the sticky. Mustard oil was easily available in this case. Work it in well and see how magically the sticky starts to unstick.

Next, some dish soap and the same scouring pad is used once again and the bottle rinsed well.

Repeat the oil and washing, if needed.

Next, use a course cloth such as a terry cloth or in this case we used some denim which has a bit of a nap. This helps to get the last bit of oil and sticky off and shine the bottle or jar to its original glory. Before the label, that is.

Wash again with soap and water until all traces of oil etc are gone. Dry well and you now have a nice bottle, as in this case, or a jar. This makes for prettier storage than if you used containers with the labels still on them. They especially look nice for storing spices and other bhoga for Krishna’s offerings displayed on open shelving. 

Another place, as pictured, is for beauty products in the bathroom.

(Special Note: This is a bathroom without a toilet. This house design keeps them separated. In the case where you have no choice but to have a toilet in your bathroom, keeping the beauty supplies out of the bathroom is recommended.)

Another tip is to save bottle tops and jar lids because these can be mixed and matched. One of the bottles pictured above, for example, has a bottle top taken from a dish soap bottle. Now the bottle of oil, in this case olive oil, easily dispenses oil for a massage. 

In the case of the bottle of mustard oil, we couldn’t find a matching top to likewise easily dispense the oil, so the solution was to gentle poke a hole into the top of the conveniently thin metal lid. 

Now oil can easily be shaken out as needed.