Anyway, I had this neat idea a few months back because I saved a LOT of my daughter's baby food jars. I used majority of them for her first birthday party as party favors (think carnival theme and I filled them with gummies and candy with a little tag thanking people for sharing her day), however I did have quite a few of them left over. I found an idea on pinterest that took baby food jars and turned them into spice jars. Neat huh? Took some flat black spray paint, sprayed the lids, took a silver metallic Sharpie and hand-wrote the names of the spices on the lids. I then filled the jars, and glued a cheap craft magnet (the 3/4" round ones) to the bottom and voila! Right? RIGHT?!
No. The jars were then off balance on the bottom so whenever you touched one, even gently, it cocked sideways and slid all the way down to the bottom of the fridge (which is where I was putting them). It also didn't help that the jars were directly in line with the doorway to the back door and my husband is about 2 1/2' wide at the shoulder (he's literally built like a linebacker, bless his heart!). I went to Lowe's and found some heavy washers to balance the bottom of the jars out, but those affected the magnetism of the cheap magnets. I layered them yet again with a final 'topcoat' of a magnetic sheet (like the kind for making business cards into magnets) to make it all even and uniform. It worked for some, not for others. I dealt with it for a while and pondered what else to do. Last night was the last straw. I was just TIRED of looking for spices and TIRED of having baby food jars that didn't stick to the fridge now stuck back in the cluttered spice cabinet.
Solutions. After brainstorming for a while, I toyed with the idea of different types of adhesives. I wasn't going to give up on my baby food jars. Just abandoning an idea because it didn't work the first time is not my forte. And those spice racks costed WAYY too much money and counter space for all the spices I would have to store. I thought about using commercial grade Velcro...however I just felt that would be...I don't know...weird. It doesn't help that the scratchy noise Velcro makes when you pull it apart makes my skin crawl either. So that was out. I thought about some kind of hanging thing with a hook and some sort of loop on the jar, but that seemed like a lot of work and a lot of space, and seriously, I'm not trying to make creative and difficult idea of the year here.
My final idea was to turn the jars over so the lids were facing the fridge and put the magnets INSIDE the lids. Hey, that way the magnets couldn't get knocked off and they would have a potentially flat surface against the fridge. I glued the first magnet in the center of the lid and it wasn't strong enough to hold an empty jar to the fridge. I put the jar down and went back to the drawing board. I didn't have any stronger magnets and the only ones I could find were on ebay and looked bulky. I have a giant box full of magnets and like I said before about abandoning the baby food jars, I just wasn't about to do it.
I decided if ONE magnet was x powerful, then 2 magnets must be 2x, right? That crash course in Algebra is paying off....well if magnetism is a constant anyways. Regardless, I was on a mission to figure out how to get two magnets in the lids. They fit on top of each other, but somehow 'lost' some magnetism being stacked. It still wasn't strong enough to hold the jar with anything in it to the fridge. I put them in the lid side by side instead and that helped. I stacked the magnets so there was two on top of each other with them side by side in the lid, for a total of 4 magnets in the lid. Worked perfect. Almost. Needed one more little oomph, so instead of stacking even MORE magnets inside, I utilized the magnetic sheets from before and stuck that to the outside of the lid. I printed plain labels from my Dymo label maker for the outward facing side of the jars instead of doing anything super fancy. Bam! Perfection. Sort of.
Some of the heavier jars fell off their magnetic sheets and slid down the fridge, but stuck to the fridge well when they actually stuck to the sheets. I decided to whip out the hot glue gun and glue the magnetic sheets to the outside. Initially I tried putting a big glue dob in the middle of the lid and stick the magnetic sheet to that which did NOT work. The 'pop up' button on the lids plus the dob of hot glue made a giant hill in the middle of the lid so it didn't stick at ALL to the fridge. I peeled that one off and instead made an "O" with the glue in the divot between the pop up button and the lip of the lid. Pressed the magnetic sheet into it and it worked! I've only had one or two fall off the glued on magnetic sheets so far, so I'm hoping for the best. Don't think I won't whip out the 5200 and glue those sh*ts on there forever, I'm tired of playing now. Hehe.
Here's a picture of the final project:
Other than the 4+ hours I spent doing that, today was pretty boring. I concocted a special dish for dinner, and when I say special I mean "pregnancy special." I had a small box of Annie Chung's Soy Ginger meal starter, so I whipped out some broccoli, onions, ginger slices, soy beans, soy sauce, garlic rice wine vinegar, some natural seasoning salt, and some angel hair pasta. Yep. The pasta that was included didn't look like a whole lot, so I didn't want to run out. And I could have leftovers. In the end I added some canned oysters for the husband that I picked out of mine, and a handful of grated Parmesan. My cousin told me that together did NOT sound appetizing to her, but I thought it was pretty dang good! Should have had more broccoli but I thought for sure two heads would be enough. :/ Anyways, there's leftovers. Not sure if husband will engage in the consumption of said leftovers, but that's just fine with me!
Welp, nothing much more to report for the day. Hope everyone has a good one and happy eating! :)
**UPDATE** So, after I posted this, I noticed some of the jars were sliding off the flat magnets and becoming detached from the refrigerator, causing other jars to fall. I went back today (Aug 24th), peeled the flat business card magnets off the lids and peeled the dried hot glue off of them. I reapplied some marine grade 5200 adhesive to the lids, and reapplied the magnets. I am letting them dry overnight and I can almost guarantee the flat magnets WILL NOT come off again. I didn't trust super glue, as I have tried that before and I know Gorilla glue-although it is a tough adhesive-will 'puff up' and make yucky yellow bubbly foam out the sides when it expands. And who knows how that would affect the actual magnetism with the lids. I will update in a few days with another picture to let everyone know how this worked out. I don't want anyone to deal with the falling jars and feel like a failure because it happened to me too. I just know that whenever my husband needs serious adhesives when he's working in his mechanic shop outside, 5200 is usually what he turns to. :)
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