I think it's official: I'm wealthy in canning jars

Amassing canning jars has been a lot like building up monetary savings, for me, at least. When I first started canning, it felt like there were times when I had enough jars/spending money, and times when emergencies would arise and I was scrambling to make it through.  I constantly had my eyes open for ways to thrift, and canning jars were part of that thrift: I'd nab curbside jars, gladly accept hand-me-down jars from other people's houses, even pay for 25¢ jars from yard sales.  Still, occasionally I'd have to break down and purchase more at full price.

It's hard to go from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset, not only with money but also with other things in my life. Even though I know I have enough money to retire comfortably, for example, I can still pull out the scarcity-supervillain-cape when it comes to my morning coffee: when I travel, I carry around both a water bottle and a coffee bottle, so I don't have to wake up in a coffee desert.  

But I think I'm ready to declare that, when it comes to canning jars, I have enough and more than enough: I am wealthy in canning jars.

Here is the evidence.  Firstly, the basement shelves with jars of food I've canned or stored.

If I go grocery shopping in the basement,
here's where I go.

I've got cherries, tomatoes, peaches, lemon brine, and even a few jars of chicken stock and green beans down here. I also use jars to store dry goods like beans, sugar, rice, etc, and I've got large quantities of those on the shelves as well.  I know that apple sauce canning is in the near future, as is turkey stock (post Thanksgiving).  That means I'll be needing to fill an additional 3 or 4 dozen jars, at most.

Those are the jars that are full.  There's a whole other shelf of empty jars.  And, at the risk of drawing envy from the outside world because of flaunting how vast my vault of canning jars is, I'm just going to bling it out here for you.

So many jars.  Jars, jars, jars.

In fact, that picture above is AFTER I rearranged and culled the jar collection.  That set of shelves was getting cluttered enough that I spent an afternoon reorganizing it.  I used chalkboard paint on the front of each of the boxes to give me space to indicate what's inside (I love chalk for labeling things). I sorted each box so it contained exactly one kind of canning jar (meaning not all boxes are full, but a surprising number of them are).  Empty boxes go upside down, for quick identification and also for keeping clean.

I really, really love labeling things!

And having done all this sorting/organizing/labeling, I realized I had both more boxes than would fit on the shelves (no wonder it felt cluttered: it really was cluttered!), and also . . . drum roll . . . more canning jars than I'd be able to use.  

Too much of a good thing: more boxes than I need.

Canning jars that sit in my basement gathering dust (and sawdust) are not part of helping make the world a more frugal, sustainable place.  So now that I know I'm wealthy in canning jars (and in other areas of my life, too) , I've started the process of canning jar philanthropy.  I'm going to start offering them back into the world, via Freecycle and word of mouth.  

It's a good feeling to be rich in jars, and it's even a better feeling to finally know it.