It’s kind of a fact of life: candles are warm and inviting and sometimes smell nice. But they burn and make a mess with wax everywhere. Thus, the very vessel that supports and sustains the beautiful flame becomes encrusted with nasty blobs of wax. Add to that old candle wax, maybe a little dust and it’s kind of a nuisance.
I had three old Ball jars that I’d used for candle holders when we went camping this summer. I found them in my garage this past weekend and decided it was time to do something about it. (By the way, the reason for the jars was not out of a nostalgic romanticism–although they were pretty cool–it’s just that I don’t own a lantern.) Predictably, these jars had the last fourth of a candle each and a hard puddle of citronella wax.
I did a bit of research and found this page, which is awesome, and which contains suggestions for removing candlewax from all manner of substrates. The post I found and adapted (from user Fawn Martin at Rubedo Candles) said this:
Take a disposable aluminum pie tin that does not contain any holes (check for holes by first filling with water, then dry out THOROUGHLY before proceeding to the next step).
Preheat your oven to 175-200 degrees. No hotter, as wax is flammable at high temps!
Place the aluminum pie tin inside a deep, glass baking dish to catch any possible wax spills. (You do not want to spill any wax inside your oven when using this technique, as it will smoke and catch fire later at higher temps).
Place your votive containers upside down inside aluminum pie tin, so that as wax melts, it will drain into the pie tin.
Place in oven, and check every 20 minutes. When wax has liquefied and drained into pie tin, remove from oven.
Glasses will be hot! Pick up with a paper towel to prevent burned fingers, and wipe glass thoroughly with paper towels to absorb any residue wax. If wax has spilled into glass baking dish, wipe with paper towels while it is still hot.
If wax has been removed, but a light waxy film remains, wash votive glasses in hot water or run through dishwasher.
Let wax cool and solidify inside pie tin. When completely cool, throw away.
I pretty much followed the directions, except I stuck small blocks of wood to lift the mouth of the jar up off the pie tin to allow the wax to run freely out. I plan on using the blocks as firestarters in the fireplace this winter. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the wax didn’t stick to the pie tin AT ALL. It just popped right out, so you don’t necessarily need to throw the tin out.
I will note, however, it’s very important to WIPE THE WAX off the jar while it’s hot because that’s the make or break step. The glass looks clean when hot and if you haven’t wiped it, there remains a quite thin but very noticeable wax residue.
You know, when you’re about to have your first child people say all kinds of things like, “oh, it’s the most wonderful thing evar,” and talk about little bundles of joy. Still others, the realists–or even cynics–among us, say “oh, boy, you don’t know what’s going to hit you.” I’ve come to interpret these little onslaughts of advice–that certainly happen in other contexts–as society’s way of hinting to you that there aren’t any easy answers for the big things in life. I’ve come around more toward the latter end of the spectrum (realist/cynical) but I do try to keep my mouth shut because hey, loose lips sink ships. Anyway, back to my point. One of the things you’re not prepared for is the simple fact of bath toys. They are cute at first but then they simply become matrices for biofilms. They get old and faded. Non-bath toys become appropriated for bath purposes. Some old bath toys get outgrown, while new ones join the mix. You get the picture. This stuff is so multivariate that it would take a supercomputer to sort it out. And for what? A kid, happy in the bath, for an hour or so. Yup, definitely worth it.
Anyway, two things to deal with: organization and hygiene, which are as intimately connected as the aforementioned biofilms.
Organization
There are lots of products on the market designed to help parents sort out the bath mess. You can see they are mainly bags. Some of the bags have windows. I do not counsel you to use these. The windows soon become clouded, and even when maintaining cleanliness with bleach, etc., they remain clouded and disgusting, only serving as a reminder to you of the wonderful world of microbes that must surely lurk beneath. I used one of these for awhile and it finally got so cloudy and brittle that the little duckies on it begged me to euthanize them, which I did soon after.
Some of these organizers, which I can support, are just bags of purely mesh, which offer as little surface as possible for stuff to grow on. These can also be put in the washer and dryer. I have used a large mesh lingerie bag that hangs from a hook I installed at the back of the tub. This worked pretty well, but the drawback was the effort required to put the toys in it each time, zipping it up and rehanging. For us, that was too many steps during chaotic bathtime and the system ended up breaking down fairly regularly.
The other type, which I’ve pictured above as my final and ultimate solution–and not even mentioned in the bath toy storage sections–is a chrome (or otherwise unrustable) basket. This has the distinct advantage of serving as a mass collection device: simply scoop through the bathwater before letting it out and you’ve done all the collecting. Drain the bathwater from the tub, rinse the basket through with some more hot water, shake it around to make sure there’s no standing water and bingo. It’s the best I can come up with.
It goes without saying here that too many toys is bad. You kind of have to prune them out as you notice they’re not getting played with. They can go to join whatever you do with other toys that have been outgrown.
Hygiene
I must admit, if you can get away with it, just don’t go there with the squishy bath toys. We have them however, and they are favorites. I try and squeeze them out and then make sure they get dry (and this was a motivation for figuring out all the above options.)
When things get too slimy, in spite of my best efforts at daily maintenance, here is what I do:
Solid toys can go in the dishwasher, which does a good job at sanitizing.
My squishy toy process is a little different. I have tried boiling them, but I noticed that they were still a bit whiffy so that told me they weren’t getting clean. Drawing on my vast repository of public health techniques (cough, French major) I knew that there is a difference between disinfection (accomplished by boiling) and sterilization (accomplished using a high-temperature autoclave). Disinfection kills most of the germs. Sterilization kills all forms of life, including fungi, bacteria, viruses, spores and the like.
I don’t have an autoclave but I do have a pressure cooker (two, actually), and autoclaving is often done the same way. According to Wikipedia (the oracle) autoclaves “commonly use steam heated to 121–134 °C (250–273 °F). To achieve sterility, a holding time of at least 15 minutes at 121 °C (250 °F) or 3 minutes at 134 °C (273 °F) is required.” I don’t know exactly what temperature that my particular pressure cooker gets to so I can’t be that scientific. But I do have control over how long it’s in there.
So I take the squishy toys, lay them in a layer of water (to stop them from melting) and set them in the pressure cooker for 20 minutes. When they come out, they are hot (duh). I let them cool a bit and squish them out. The mold comes out. This is gross, but because I see it come out I know 2 things 1) that it is dead; and 2) most of it has been mechanically removed. Dead mold: it’s a good thing.
I had to write something about the Four Storage Options, which I take from a chapter in the book Confessions of an Organized Homemaker by Deniece Schofield. I say “Four Storage Options” all in caps because it is the one way.
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designed to help parents sort out the bath mess. You can see they are mainly bags. Some of the bags have windows. I do not counsel you to use these. The windows soon become clouded, and even when maintaining cleanliness with bleach, etc., they remain clouded and disgusting, only serving as a reminder to you of the wonderful world of microbes that must surely lurk beneath. I used one of these for awhile and it finally got so cloudy and brittle that the little duckies on it begged me to euthanize them, which I did soon after.
