How To De-Stink Glass Jars

I am a proud home-body and most of my free time is spent doing up and re-decorating the house. Apart from decorating the house, I also believe in keeping it clean and smelling fresh as a daisy. So, imagine my surprise when I found smelly mason jars in my kitchen when I decided to do my quarterly clean-check of the house over the weekend. Smelly jars, that too in my kitchen! It was a shocker for me. You could easily tell they were being used to store stuff like a pickle, coffee, etc., by just taking one whiff, even though they had been cleaned.

Being the compulsive cleaner that I am, I decided to do something about it. After spending hours on the Internet, I came across a few DIY that could deodorize the glass jars. And I decided to share them for the benefit of other neat freaks. If the idea of smelly jars makes your stomachs churn just as it does to me, then you need these two tricks.

• For Those Pesky Pickle-Smelling Jars

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Materials Required: Coarse salt and warm water

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1. First of all, make sure that the jar has been thoroughly cleaned. If the remnants of that delicious pickle that your mother made are still clinging to the insides of the jar then give it a good rinse with soapy water. Please be careful while doing this and make sure you don’t crack or chip the glass while rinsing the jar.
2. Now take about one tablespoon of coarse salt and put it in the jar. You can find coarse salt easily available in your nearest supermarket and you can even order it online. It’s basically the unrefined form of the table salt without additives like iodine.
3. Add some warm water to the jar. Fill it till about an inch and put the lid back on.
4. Now, give the jar a good shake. This should allow the salt to work on the smell and deodorize the jar. Do this for about 30 seconds.
5. After this, wash the jar with dish soap and warm water.
6. Keep the jar aside to dry, preferably in the sun.

After the jar has dried off, give it a sniff. You would be surprised to find that the smell has vanished. However, in case you find the smell persisting then we have a different approach for such “problem-jars”. The effectiveness of the hack we mentioned above also depends on factors like what was being stored in the jar, and for how long was it stored in there. Stronger odors such as coffee are harder to get rid of.

• For Those Hard-To-Get-Rid-Off Smells

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Materials Required: Baking soda, warm water, coarse salt, and a bottle brush or cleaning sponge

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1. Take some coarse salt and rub it inside the jar using the sponge. It can be difficult to put your hand inside jars with narrow necks, so use a bottle brush instead.
2. Next, put the baking soda in the jar. Now scrub the inside of the jar. Make sure you scrub all the corners of the jar. The insides as well as the inside of the lid.
3. Now let the jar sit for a few minutes so that the baking soda can work on it.
4. Now pour hot (if possible, boiling) water into the jar and let it sit for another couple of minutes. After doing so, make sure that the jar hasn’t cracked due to the heat.
5. After about 10 minutes, put the lid on and give it a shake. Just take care not to crack or chip the glass. Follow it with a rinse.
6. Again, let the jar dry before giving it a whiff. The smell would have vanished for sure.

If the previous hack didn’t work for you then this would have surely done the trick. Often, the jars smell because of the presence of the bacteria. You can use anti-bacterial wipes to clean the jars so as to get rid of the pesky smell problem. Also, bacteria thrive in moisture, so take care to let the jars dry completely before you bottle them and keep them back in the cabinet.

Even though this might add to your routine cleaning tasks, using glass jars to store stuff such as spices is still more sustainable. As compared to their plastic brethren, glass jars retain less odor and are also a greener and planet-friendly option for food storage. However, if you have to carry food on the go, then plastic containers are the more sensible option as they are lighter to carry, and they are less likely to sustain any damage in the travel.

What kind of containers do you prefer to store your food? Do you use any hacks to keep them odor-free? Let us know in the comments.

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