Candle Jars- How to Clean Them Out [Quickly and Easily!]

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Want to know how to clean out candle jars?

How many times have you bought a candle, used it all up and thrown the jar away wishing you could reuse the pretty jar?

I’ve figured out a way to easily clean out those candle jars! It really only takes a few minutes. Stop throwing them away and start keeping them!

Cleaning out candle jars is really simple!

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I have some wax warmers around my house. A few years ago, I bought a new one.

The instructions that came with it had a pretty ingenious idea for cleaning them out. When you are ready to remove the wax, place the wax holder in the freezer for about fifteen minutes.

Take the wax holder out and the wax will slide out easily. I tried it, and it really works. That’s how I remove wax from them now.

It’s so much easier than trying to pry the wax out.

How to Clean Out Candle Jars

Really, the only things you’ll need are the used up candle jars, a butter knife, water, a freezer, some S.O.S. pads and some soap. You may also want some paper towels to wipe your jars out once you’ve finished cleaning them.

Supplies you’ll need:

used candle jars
a butter knife
water
a freezer
S.O.S. pads
liquid dish soap

Removing the Old Wax

I was trying to figure out how I could clean out some candle jars that I had used all of the life out of. I decided to put them in the freezer to loosen the wax.

These jars were larger than the wax holder in my wax warmer, so I left them in the freezer for about 30 minutes. I wanted to make sure they were good and cold.

Make sure that both the glass and the wax are nice and cold.

I took a butter knife and gently stuck it down into the wax around the edge of the jar to see if it would slide out. It didn’t work when I tried to simply pry it away from the edges.

That made sense after I thought about it. The wax holder from my wax warmer has a slight curve to the edges of the holder. The candle jar was a 90 degree angle. I’d have to try something different.

Save me for later!

I gently poked the tip of the butter knife into the wax and broke it up into 3 or 4 pieces. Once I broke the wax up, it popped up pretty easily.

You can see where I poked the knife into the wax in a few places to break it up.

One of the candle jars that I cleaned had a stubborn wick holder that didn’t want to come out. I pried on it a few times with the butter knife before I finally put it into the freezer again. After about ten minutes in the freezer, the wick holder popped out.

Cleaning The Candle Jars Up

Now that the majority of the wax was out, I needed to get the labels off and get any wax residue off of the sides.

The labels peeled off of the front of the jars very easily and didn’t leave any residue. The stickers on the bottom were a different type of sticker.

To remove the stickers on the bottom, I simply wet them and rubbed them off with my fingers. I was able to remove all of the label on the bottom of the jars just by wetting them.

I used an S.O.S. pad and soap to remove any wax residue that was inside the jars. It surprised me how easily it came off. The jars cleaned up really well.

No Windex or other chemicals required!

There was a little bit of wax left inside the jar. I used soap and an S.O.S. pad to remove it.

Cleaning Old Candle Jars is Too Easy!

The whole process took me about 45 minutes, including the time needed to freeze the wax in the jars. Now I have two ‘new’ gorgeous storage jars!

clean out candle jars, cleaning old candle jars

Look how clean this jar is! And it was soo easy!!

This is a jar that I cleaned and am already using! The labels came off nice and neat, and all of the wax residue came off as well.

Look how clean this jar is! And it was soo easy!!

I’ve already put these two jars to use storing soap dyes and dandelion salve. Click here to see how I make an easy five-minute lavender goat’s milk soap!

Final Thoughts on Cleaning Candle Jars

This has to be one of the easiest ways to clean these candle jars out. I’ve done several now and I’m so glad that I thought of this!

Cleaning out candle jars on requires about 45 minutes of time and some soap, water and S.O.S. pads. The jars come clean really easily if you allow them to sit and get really cold in the freezer.

Once they are cold, break the wax up and start pulling it out. Then all that’s left to do is to clean them up and give them a new life!

What would you store in these jars? Let me know!

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