Tuesday, February 8, 2022

T.T.: A Makeshift Jar Brush

I spend a lot of time washing out jars. A lot of my food storage is in canning jars, and I always wash out and re-use old peanut butter jars, jam jars, etc. 

This is pretty easy with wide-mouth jars. I have small hands and can get my hand right in to wash the bottom.

But regular mouth jars? Nope. My hand is not getting in there.

There are dedicated jar brushes for this very problem, but I don't have one. They're big, and plastic, and I don't want to have to store one.

So when I have a jar that needs to be scrubbed inside and I can't get my hand in, this is what I do:


That's a nylon scrubby that I stuff into the jar with some soapy water. Then I use a long-handled utensil of some kind to scrub it around the inside of the jar. 

The jar in the photo is a smaller jar, so I just used a big fork. For bigger jars, I use the handle of my spatula to reach the bottom.

It's still not as easy as scrubbing out a jar in which I can actually fit my hand, and probably not as convenient as using an actual jar brush, but it will eventually get the jars clean. 

One less kitchen item to buy, one less to clean, one less to throw away when it gets gross. Works for me.

2 comments:

sheila said...

My mother would use small gravel to clean jars. Just put a few small stones in the jar with some soapy water and shake and swirl it around. It cleans surprisingly well.

Jenny said...

This is so me! Where there's a will, there's a way. I can't believe the gadgets that people apparently spend their hard-earned money on! Thanks to Heloise and others like her, we don't need to!