Removing Labels

beautiful clean jars 

We've been saving up our jars for a while, intending to reorganize our pantries. Megan's need for canning jars is about to hit, and Laura's husband eats a lot of salsa; the only problem was the unattractive labels. They didn't look nice, and they made it harder to figure out what was in the jar. Is this white powder cornstarch or flour? Who can tell, it's labeled salsa?

OxiClean to remove labels 

After some lost hours on Pinterest, one of us stumbled upon an article saying that if you soak the jars in hot water with OxiClean the labels would come right off.

It worked like a charm! Most of the labels do come right off, and you will find them floating in the water with little to no work.  

Tips

• The hotter the water the better. Boiling water works the best. WARNING! Boiling water will melt plastic jars. Plain ol' hot water will work fine for getting labels off plastic.
• Wear gloves. The OxiClean will do horrible things to your fingernails. Also, it makes working in the hot/boiling water more tolerable.
• Use steel wool and a scraper (like a butter knife) to get the exceptionally sticky labels off.

We found the clear labels have to soak longer. Then you have to peel the label and get down to just a sticky residue.

Megan gets a stubborn label off a jar 

Truly a labor of love.

Plastic jars don't come as clean as the glass, the glue used on the labels take a lot of soaking and scrubbing.

After the Oxiclean method of label removal you get left with a lot of jars that still have glue residue making them exceptionally sticky.

clear label and extra sticky glue 

We mixed together some baking soda and coconut oil. 

Why that particular combo? Well, baking soda for the scrubby action, and coconut oil because Megan always uses it to remove

Most labels come off with just a little soaking 

sticky crud when it gets on her hands. 

It seems to have a good cleansing effect, like it’s actively breaking down the sticky hand junk. We've tried other oils to clean with, and have found that coconut or castor oils are the way to go; the cheapie vegetable oil just makes a bigger mess. If you have castor oil, it'll probably work just as well, if not better. It's just a lot more messy than coconut oil.

Slather the coconut oil and baking soda mix onto your stubborn stickies, and then let them sit for about 20 minutes. Grab a scrubbie, and wipe away all the mess. Also, we found that using a dry paper towel to just wipe all the crud off works perfectly.

coconut oil mixed with baking soda to remove glue 

Wash your bottle or jar like normal, to get the oil residue off, and you’ll be left with a sparking clean new jar, awaiting all sorts of adventures.

Later we will post about how to get those screenprinted or painted labels off glass and ceramic! We'll also show you two ways of decorating the lids of your cleaned jars, so nobody will have to know your entire pantry storage came out of the recycle bin!

~Megan and Laura

Let us know if you have any additional questions or if you have another a better method to get labels off! Our comment section is just below, and you don't need to register first.