The following guest post is by Aubri Parmenter, Mason Jar Lifestyle’s new intern extraordinaire! Aubri is a super busy wife, student, photographer, and mother of two. She is also a serious Mason jar fan who wants to show you how life changing these little jars can be. You’ll be seeing more of her around these parts in the coming weeks and months. Take it away, Aubri!
When a lot of us think about mason jars, we immediately think about food, and definitely not about bathrooms. If you’re anything like me (or my husband!) you probably grew up with mom and grandma (and great-grandma in my case!) putting up yummy things each fall. My mother-in-law gave us an amazing basket at my bridal shower filled with home-canned corn, carrots, green beans, tomato sauce, apple sauce, peaches, pears… to represent the year’s supply of home-canned yumminess and love she had put up for us for our first year together. For many, many years, Mason jars have just been about food for me. I always washed and stored them in the garage for the next canning season… until now! Now, I have seen the light and there are mason jars in my bathroom. I promise I’m not nuts and after you see these tips, I bet you’ll be grabbing some of your jars out of storage to put them to use in your bathroom too!
1. Bathroom storage simplification:
Just about everywhere you look these days, you’re finding people utilizing mason jars for storage. It’s not a new thing, but it is certainly something that you could incorporate into your home with relative ease and great impact. If your bathroom counter is anything like mine used to be (low on style, high on stuff) corralling your things into pretty jars can be provide a great facelift to your design. Grab a pretty tray that’s collecting dust in a cupboard, or rescue one from a thrift shop and try out the following sizes of mason jars to store those sometimes-cluttery bathroom supplies! Any of the jars mentioned below would work great with one of our sundry lids, making the jar a two-in-one holder!
• quarter-pint jars are the perfect size to hold q-tips, and you can even use quilted jelly jars if you like a little extra sparkle
• half-pint jars make excellent holders for cotton rounds
• pint jars are perfect for toothbrushes and makeup brushes (using a frog lid helps keep them upright and not touching!)
• quart jars are great for cotton balls
2. DIY cleaners
We hear a lot of scary things about the health hazards that certain chemicals can present. We also hear a lot of scary things about all those cleaning chemicals finding their way into our wastewater, and all the empty plastic bottles in our landfills. Either way you slice it, simplification of our cleaning routines is a great thing. Our grandmas and great-grandmas used fewer products than we did and still had sparkling clean homes… when you make your own cleaning products; you save money and contribute less waste to landfills. What does this have to do with mason jars? EVERYTHING!
• Throw some home made scouring powder into a half-pint jar, put a shaker lid on and you’re ready to clean that tub
• Place an Adapta-Cap Sprayer Lid on any regular-mouth jar and fill with all-purpose cleaner. I like the 12 oz quilted jelly jars for this application because they’re easier to hold and they look so pretty, but really any regular mouth mason jar will work.
3. Homemade foaming hand soap
Foaming hand soap was born to live in a mason jar. If you’re using a pint jar, many even have measurement marks on the side. It is so simple to whip up a batch of DIY foaming soap right in the jar, no messy measuring cups required. Top it with a foaming soap pump lid and you’re ready to go.
It’s safe to say that mason jars are pretty handy when it comes to streamlining your bathroom clutter. You can line them up on a counter, arrange them artfully on a pretty tray, or even create a rustic piece of functional art by securing them to a piece of wood using pipe clamps. The only limit is your imagination!
