How to re-purpose candle canisters for tidy tea storage.
Materials: Emptied canisters from used candles, blackboard paint and chalk, tea.
Ah, tea! Sipping a hot homegrown herbal tea on a cold day is my bliss. I find it especially calming. Add a candle… even better. Whether you’re living life with too much still time, or not enough, these are simple pleasures that aid the enjoyment of time spent being still. So it seems perfect to pair up tea storage needs with the reusing of empty canisters or jars from used-up candles.
Now, not all of my storage-needing tea is homegrown. In fact, most of it isn’t. When I do buy it, I prefer to buy in bulk* wherever possible, and loose leaf. While there’s still some packaging involved, it’s much less than with tea bags, or small quantities. What I can’t get in bulk for now, I find the larger loose leaf tea packets from Love Tea are the next best thing. Their teas are organic, fairly traded, and thoughtfully packaged when it comes to waste & recycling.
*If you’re on the Central Coast of NSW, you may love Pulse Co-op for buying in bulk. They have been able to source a lovely organic loose leaf rooibos and chai spice mix.
If you’re drinking loose leaf tea like me, you may have discovered this issue of storing it too. My tea cupboard (which in a little apartment, is a shared little shelf with several other kitchen items) can get quite unruly. But at one point in being motivated to tidy it (thank you, Marie Kondo!), there was also in my home a lovely tea canister requiring re-purposing.
Thanks to family ties, we discovered this local soy candle business – Luxx Soy. My whole family was soon in love with them. They quickly became a favourite gift to receive and give. I knew the empty canisters would eventually prove useful storage, but now it was apparent that the canisters & tea were meant to be friends!
What were the steps:
- Thoroughly wash and dry the candle canisters.
- Paint on a label area with 2 coats of blackboard paint. (Glad I hung on to that from a project years ago!)
- Fill with tea and label with chalk.
The blackboard front is great, because the canister labels can change to suit my needs. Maybe they’ll even be used to store something else one day. But for now, they’re pretty enough to stay out on display, which conveniently eases some space burden of the remaining tea paraphernalia in the cupboard.
And now…tea time!
