5 ingenious ways to reuse bottles, jars and glassware in your home
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Laura Ashley tile sample, Star from Vintage Market, Fishers Gin, £39.95, 31Dover.com
When you finish a pot of jam, a bottle of gin, or a jar of gherkins, what do you do with the empty pot? Often times I've thrown it straight into the recycling and not given it a second thought, but in more recent months I've started collecting used jars and bottles to repurpose them.
It all started when I was trying to brainstorm ideas for a photoshoot – where a lot of my ideas start! I had this idea to completely fill a long kitchen shelf with clear jam jars in all different shapes and sizes, fill each of them to the top with soil and have plant life overgrowing out of them.
Nice idea in principle, but I was on a super tight budget and didn't have any jam jars at the time. Instead of buying 20+ jars of jam and clean them out, wasting a lot of delicious food I had to buy jars all clean and ready to fill.
It stressed me out to think of all the jam jars I ever completed in my life, thrown away. If only I kept them, I'd have a shelf filled with plants, essentially for free.
This is what triggered my "repurposing" mindset.
Now, before I throw any glass bottle or jar away, I wash it all off, remove the label and think – what can I use this for? what home can I give this?
Usually I end up at one of these:
1. Use it as a vase, pop in pretty flowers and voilé
2. Use it as a plant pot. As per my point above.
3. Use it as a tea light holder in the garden or on the kitchen table.
4. Pop it on a shelf and style it up with other home accessories.
5. Use it as a glass. Cocktails anyone?
I got this gorgeous Fishers Gin from 31Dover.com who sell all kinds of glorious shaped alcohol bottles – the special kind you wouldn't normally find on a supermarket shelf. It broke my heart to throw it away, with it's patterned design, so I gave my dried flowers a new home and popped it on my sun room shelf.
