My version of canning: Bottle up that paint

A few weeks ago my cute friend (@hannas_happy on IG) posted a photo of beautiful ruby-red cherry syrup she made and canned herself using fruit from her own yard. Isn’t that syrup gorgeous?! Man, she is living the life I imagined for myself, complete with chickens in the yard, but since I’m a kitchen idiot, I undertook a canning project more my speed: storing paint in Ball jars.

This is my second go-round with storing paint this way. Right after we moved in, back in 2012, we repainted much of the house, and I decanted the leftover paint into jars for easy touch-ups. And I’ll be honest—part of the appeal is how pretty these colorful jars look when stored together.

We’re coming up on one year since we wrapped up our latest renovation, and I wanted to get the leftover paint into jars and out of the stained paint cans clogging up my laundry room. So I bought 12 jars and got busy the other morning while the kiddos were still asleep.

Isn’t it fun to see an entire house’s color scheme in one quick photo? I marked each jar with the paint name, and because one color was custom, I peeled the label off its paint can and stuck it to the side of its jar. Then if I need to mix up more someday, I’ve got the formula handy.

Storing paint in jars makes it easy to do touch-ups. Just shake, open, and dip your tiny brush inside. No popping off a messy paint-can lid with a screwdriver you have to search the house to find anyway.

Tell me, how do you store leftover paint? And how long do you keep paint around? I can store all 12 of these jars on a single cabinet shelf in my basement where it’s dark and cool—optimal conditions for storing paint. But where do you keep yours? And how often do you touch up paint? •