dozens of tiny jam jars

January 3, 2024 7:49 AM

I have done the Bonne Maman advent calendar for the last two years and now I have a lot of tiny jam jars. What can I do with them?

I have ~50 one-ounce glass jam jars with lids (random image for reference).

I currently use them as pills containers for traveling. They make decent mini-shot glasses - but I have a lot. I did some research and it seems like they are too small to be suitable candles. Other than that - what should I do with these?

posted by quadrilaterals to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (23 answers total)

You could use them as spice jars-- especially if you know of a place that sells dried herbs and spices in bulk.
posted by Maxwell_Smart at 7:54 AM on January 3

Spice jars was my first thought as well. Could also put nuts/bolts in them if you're a handy type. Make tiny paint kits? Apparently Bonne Maman recommends drilling holes in the lids and putting lights on them, so they're decorative string lights.
posted by hepta at 7:58 AM on January 3

Storage for tiny things: spices, hardware, could be nice to do something with a similar setup for jewelry. Or a little palette for paints or inks? Animal shelters/wildlife rehab places sometimes use these to mix up tiny batches of formula, you could see if any shelters near you could use them. Or if anyone in your life might like an advent calendar, you could make one and gift it this year—fill up the jars with candy, small toys, trinkets.
posted by music for skeletons at 7:59 AM on January 3

Spice jars of course...
posted by Czjewel at 7:59 AM on January 3

Put a few in your junk drawer to corral tiny things. I think you would get a lot of takers giving them away on Craigslist or Buy Nothing, too.
posted by acidic at 8:02 AM on January 3

Yeah, I've never been too bothered about my mismatched spice jars, but if I had those, I'd be tempted to upgrade. I could also see those being nice for loose leaf tea samples that I'm currently keeping in little baggies. Also, since I'm just one person, I go through butter slowly and that looks like a reasonably sized container for a small portion of butter to set out on the counter for a bit when I want spreadable butter.

For non-culinary purposes, storage for things like beads, small screws and nails, paperclips, pigments/paint, odd bits of ribbon. I have a couple small jars that I keep rocks and shells and other odd little things in just because I think they're nice, those could work for that.
posted by EvaDestruction at 8:06 AM on January 3

I use them to take salad dressing in my lunch. They open pretty easily so I wouldn't trust them to be loose in my bag, but I put them inside the salad container.
posted by beyond_pink at 8:06 AM on January 3

I use them for single servings of salad dressings or condiments in my packed lunches or for picnics. Great for corralling stuff in my toolbox and sewing kit. You can propagate plants in them or store goos like lip balm (I have the giant tin of Bag Balm and I don't like carrying it around).
posted by pollytropos at 8:24 AM on January 3

We turned ours into tiny adorable tea lights.
posted by HotToddy at 8:24 AM on January 3

Do you know anyone who does bead-weaving? They're popular for people who need to store a gazillion colours of small beads.

And legality may vary in your jurisdiction but I know some weed connoisseurs who use them to store different varietals in their stash.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:00 AM on January 3

I had exactly these, albeit only one year's worth. I lovingly washed and kept them, sure that somebody on the local buy nothing group would be super-excited to snap them up for some kind of craft project unimagined by me. In the end the guy who took them said he was going to use them for herbs and spices, so yep I guess that confirms the MeFi consensus. They seem too small to me, but he was pleased with them!
posted by penguin pie at 9:34 AM on January 3

Perfect for holding chopped olives or some other finely diced food.
posted by effluvia at 9:43 AM on January 3

My mom hot glue gunned pretty ribbons into the lids of a few and made little Christmas ornaments out of them (filled with festive candies). They were really, really cute!
posted by Sweetchrysanthemum at 9:54 AM on January 3

Ambitious, but you could make teeny tiny snow globes and give them out as gifts next Christmas.
posted by donut_princess at 10:13 AM on January 3

ah a fellow jam connoisseur! i use these for travel for my face moisturizer/lotions, etc. it's always just enough for about a weeklong trip, and takes up less room in my carry-on. and if you have a refillery near you, i bet they'd love a collection of small jars for their customers to use.
posted by kerning at 10:23 AM on January 3

Make DIY advent calendar and fill the empty jars with little goodies
posted by smirkette at 10:54 AM on January 3

Tea lights
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:04 AM on January 3

We use them to take small amounts of condiments (ketchup, mustard, hot sauce, etc.) in our lunchboxes or on camping trips. If you poke holes in the lid, they can be travel-sized salt or pepper shakers (though you'd need to cover the lid or put a liner in).

You can also paint the lids and fill them with glitter, colored sand, beads or dyed mineral oil, which can be Halloween decor as "potion jars" or a Christmas tree ornament if you glue a ribbon loop to the top.
posted by fifthpocket at 12:07 PM on January 3

I use them for succulent propagations and then give them away as little tiny gifts.
posted by wakannai at 2:07 PM on January 3

I use them to bring small ammounts of Vinegar & cooking ingredients if i am going camping or to a getaway where we have a kitchen.

I also give them away constantly by taking over some cheese & crackers and a single tiny jam jar (or a dallop of fancy mustard or whatever other cool condiment that goes well with on my snack plate) to a friends house, and then tell the friend how handy it is to have a tiny jar around for small ammts of salad dressing or whatever.
posted by wowenthusiast at 7:54 PM on January 3

A friend of mine will occasionally fill hers with sweets and let her kids play as sweet-shop owners.
posted by Hermione Dies at 12:30 AM on January 4

You probably don't bake.

If you did, those jars are a very cute way to store cookie decorating supplies, and spices, bought in bulk. You won't want a quarter of a cup of pink sprinkles and a quarter of a cup of chocolate sprinkles and a quarter of a cup of white sprinkles, and a quarter of a cup of silver dragees... You'll want about a tablespoon each.

You can make up your own spice blends and put them into the jars. Poudre Douce, also known as pumpkin spice, was originally sweet spices like nutmeg, ginger, mace and cloves. We now also add cinnamon. You can make a sharper version, or a milder version than the commercial ones. You can mix up your own Poudre Fort, from cayenne, chili, turmeric, mustard, and again tinker with it to get original effects.

But you can also just use them to store tiny quantities of spices bought in bulk, like the cookie decorations. If you buy less common spice condiments like Garam Masala for the first time, or caraway seeds, you won't want to buy a whole jar and pay for the jar too, which will cost more than loose spices won't match anything else in your spice cabinet. You'll want to get it an a bulk store and then need something to put it in other than the little plastic bag.

You can use a jar to hold spare plastic bread closure tags - some commercial bakers are switching to cardboard which is an excellent thing in terms of reducing plastic consumption, but cardboard tags can get too bent to seal the bread bag before you are two thirds of the way through the loaf, especially in humid weather.

Depending on the size of your mugs you can fill them with instant single servings of hot cocoa, or instant soup.

You can keep them for storing those all important, tiny, easy to lose things that you need to keep track of, like the little screw that dropped out of your eye glasses, or the button from your blouse that you are going to sew back on whenever you finally get a weekend off. Use a different jar for each.
posted by Jane the Brown at 6:49 AM on January 4

Glass and steel are basically 100% recyclable. About 3/4 of the steel used in the US is recycled.

I say this because a 1 oz spice jar is too small -- mine are 8oz, although 4 is more common.

If you don't already have the sort of hobby that involves small jars, a surfeit of small jars is no reason to develop one.

(Also I am low key mad about that particular advent calendar because the instance our kid was gifted had a high rate of repeats and even some honey, which is not by any stretch a jam.)
posted by novalis_dt at 5:24 PM on January 5