The Humbled Homemaker: Repurposing Baby Food Jars {The First Years: Starting Solids}

It's hard to believe this is the final post in our Starting Solids series! Be sure to go back and check out the complete series (listed below) if you missed a post!

In the last post in this series, I wrote about 6 ways to use up baby food purees. Today, we're looking at repurposing those old baby food jars once all the food is gone!

Now, if you made your own baby food, you may not even have any jars to repurpose. BUT, not many of us take homemade baby food on the go, and, after a while, quite a few jars will start to accumulate--even for those of us who mostly make our own food.

Image by jencu

Now you can just rinse them out and toss them in the recycling bin, but repurposing them is an even greener idea!

Check out these 7 ways to repurpose those old baby food jars:

1. Use them to store spices. This is the main way I now re-use my old jars. I love that I can easily dip my measuring spoons into the wide neck of the jar. I do have a fancy-smachy spice rack, but I use the old baby food jars for my excess spices, so they stay in the cabinet until I need them. Mine are plain and simple. I use a sharpie to notate the type of spice each one contains.

But check out the following repurposed baby food jars-turned-spice containers from DAV.I.SON! Wow! She attached magnets and everything!

Image by DAV.I.SON via Pinterest

2. Use them for children's crafts. You can make all kinds of crafts with old jars, or you can simply use them to store fingerpaint, etc.

3. Use them as toddler-sized musical instruments. Let your child help you pick out beans, sand, acorns, beads, coins or anything else that makes noise to place in the jars. Your child will be fascinated with the different sounds each jar will make! Decorate the outside of the jar together!

Check out the tiny jar of Nutella! You can do the same with peanut butter, jelly, hummus, etc.!
Image by _Libby_

4. Use them to store homemade personal body care products, like homemade deodorant, eye cream or even small lotion bars.

5. Use them as "encouraging note" or "prayer request" jars. Some students at my husband's school once wrote tiny notes of encouragement and placed them in baby food jars and gifted them to their teachers. You can do the same with prayer requests.

Image by stevendepolo

6. Use them to make Christmas ornaments. Snow globes anyone?

7. Use them to make pretend food for your child's play kitchen. A friend of mine lets her children pick out dry beans, pasta, rice, etc. to store in the jars, and she super glues the lids shut. No more cheap plastic food! It's cheaper and better for the environment! (Although, I confess, Little Girl's toy kitchen is full of plastic food!)