One of my biggest pet peeves since starting this journey into making household products is putting deliciously nontoxic cleaners into empty plastic spray bottles.
It just seems so wrong on so many levels. If we’re trying to stay away from the leaching of bad stuff into our cleaning supplies, shouldn’t we be doing our best to avoid plastics as much as possible? Shouldn’t we?
Now, you can buy glass spray bottles, but they’re not cheap. They’ve actually been SO cost-prohibitive, I’ve had a hard time justifying buying one when I have so danged many glass jars in my house already.
And, make no mistake about it, it was a long, drawn-out thinking process to figure out how this would work. A year of thinking, at least.
And then I saw these homemade soap dispensers created from mason jars and a light started to flicker. A little. Like when a fluorescent bulb just starts to warm up and almost induces a seizure. That kind of flickering.
See, the homemade mason jar soap dispensers use glue to hold everything together. But that wouldn’t work for a spray bottle, because you have to be able to hold it by its sprayer without the sprayer falling off. I know of no glue strong enough to offer that kind of insurance. Also, I wanted to be able to replace the sprayer if it ever broke (because they’re always freaking breaking).
Thus began a three-hour stare-down earlier this week with a mason jar and an empty Method cleaner bottle. I knew the two things would fit together. Somehow.
And then, suddenly, the lightbulb exploded into a thousand sparkling diamonds. And the glass jar spray bottle was born.
How to Turn a Glass Jar into a Spray Bottle
Before we get started, I want to make something crystal-loving-clear.
I am not handy.
Most of the time, I forget which way to turn the faucet to make the water hot. I cannot, for the life of me, put a nail into the wall that stands straight. Bendy straws baffle me.
So the fact that I was able to figure this out – and do it all by myself – should convince you of its elementary level.
Convinced? Here’s a picture of what you need for this:
What You Need To Make Your Glass Jar Spray Bottle
- A handheld drill or a hammer and nail
- A glass jar with a metal lid
- An empty spray bottle (the Method bottles seem to be an excellent “mouth” size) with a working sprayer
- X-acto knife or similar
- A Sharpie or other pen that will trace on metal
Step 1: Cut the top of the bottle into a circle with your knife, so you’re left with a circular piece of plastic that extends about an inch from the “mouth.”
Your bottle will now look something like this (and you can now figure out something else crafty to do with the leftover bottle – have fun!):
Step 2: Trace around the mouth of your bottle on the middle of your jar lid.
It’ll be a tight squeeze to get your pen in there, but be sure to get as close to a perfect circle outline as you can. This is how you’ll know where to put holes.
Step 3: Poke holes around the outline of your circle using your drill or a hammer and nail.
Absolutely try to stick to your “circle” as much as humanly possible while you’re doing this.
It’s important to keep your hole as close to the size of your bottle mouth as possible, to prevent leakage through the top when you’re finished.
Once you’ve poked enough holes around your circle outline, you should be able to just push and twist all the metal out from the middle:
You’re almost done!
Step 4: Push the mouth of your plastic bottle through the hole, so the top of the mouth is pushing up through the top of the lid.
It’s a tight squeeze to get this through, but if you twist and push a little, it should slide through handily.
And what you’re left with looks like this:
And now what do you do?
You screw the lid on the jar and the spray nozzle onto the bottle mouth. You may need to trim the “hose” part a little with scissors to fit into your jar – but one of my favorite parts about this is that your hose can be long enough to catch ALL the liquid. Nothing is more frustrating than using a spray bottle that you have to tilt in one direction only to get that last half cup of liquid to come out the top.
And you’re done! (Unless you want to paint the lid, or cover it with scrapbook paper like I did.)
Some Questions You Might Have
Does the spray lever hit the jar lid? It looks like it would.
It does not. At all, actually. It sprays perfectly all the way down and the lid doesn’t hinder the spray motion at all.
There’s still plastic in it; doesn’t that defeat the purpose?
Yes, the hose part is still plastic, but I figure this remedy is a lot less icky than letting our beautifully natural cleaners fester away in a big plastic bottle for months at a time. If you come across a glass hose that would work, I’d love to see it.
Won’t it leak out the top?
First, I recommend leaving at least an inch of this bottle empty, so the chances of sloshing out the top are significantly minimized. As mentioned, if you measure and cut your hole properly, the screw-on part of the spray nozzle should cover your hole nicely (and you can screw it down super tight if need be).
Also, once the liquid level is under the level of your “plastic mouth” bottom, the mouth bottom helps prevent any slopping over the top.
This, however, won’t make up for a leaky/defective spray nozzle head. There’s nothing you can do about that except change out the spray nozzle.
What about the metal edges around the holes? Won’t they cut you?
Actually, the top of the spray nozzle perfectly encased the tiny metal edges around the hole in the jar lid. Perfectly. That’s why it’s important to keep your jar lid hole as close to the size of the plastic mouth as possible. Once you get that baby screwed in and over the metal hole, there are no pokey pieces left to nick you.
How did you get to be such a genius?
I KNEW you’d ask that!
I owe everything I am to Nancy Drew and Iggy Pop.
Here It Is, One More Time In Action
DIY glass jar spray bottle.
Any questions?
Homemade All-Purpose Cleaning Spray With Infused Vinegar
I totally love it
I have a question! How do you know that the spray bottle topper will fit the plastic bottle head? Are all plastic bottle heads the same size? Thanks!
Love it, especially the final pic of the glass bottle standing triumphantly against the cloud filled sky. Pretty funny … ingenious to say the least.
do you have any ideal on how to get rid of pesty moles and bolds
Do you have an idea for making your own refillable container for use in those automatic air freshener dispensers. They take 6.17 or 6.25 ounce cans.? These refill cans have such horrible strong toxic smelling scents to them. I recently bought one for $4 and do not use it . I would like to make my own fragrance and use the scents that I personally enjoy. So of course the problem is what container will fit in the dispenser the same way as the can does. Help !!!! Thank, Mary
Spray nozzle heads fit perfectly on an old Braggs Raw Apple Cider Vinegar glass bottle. Much faster than making a lid for a mason jar to fit a spray nozzle head. 🙂
To avoid leaching from the plastic tube and sprayer, I simply take it out between cleanings so the vinegar won’t eat away at it. Then I reattach the sprayer to a bottler filled with water, squirt it a few times to clean it out then problem solved.
Soy sauce bottle- perfect!!
I’ve been making my own spray bottles for my natural cleaners with oil and vinegar bottles that I save. I really want an alternative to the plastic tubing…
I’ve been thinking about trying a silicone tube since it’s an inert substance, as far as we know…and if this doesn’t work maybe organic natural rubber tubing…
These are just suggestions and I haven’t tried them yet.
Here’s what I found for silicone tubing online and I’m sure you can found it at a hardware store… http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=23884 (Ironically, it’s sold by a US plastic company)
Also, http://morebeer.com/products/silicone-tubing-12-id-foot.html?gclid=CMztmsmv1rgCFaXm7Aodyj0Ajg
There are a few other sites online…just google/bing “silicone tube”
I found natural rubber tubing as well… http://amzn.to/2aoR5lk
I’d be weary of latex, but would choose it over plastic.
Silicone tubing seems like the best bet since it’s odorless, flavorless, inert, Food-grade, and high heat stable.
Thoughts?
Also, I am not worried about the nozzle/spray-mechanism since it won’t be in direct contact with the liquid for more than a few seconds at the most. I just don’t want the chemicals in the plastic tubing leaching into my natural cleaner. If I’m making the effort to clean without chemicals, I don’t my vinegar/water/hydrogen peroxide/essential oils sitting in plastic continuously!
Except that there is some that stays in the spray mechanism housing that you’ll end up using with your next spray.
So maybe I’m the only one seeing the obvious, but isn’t the pick-up tube (and spray mechanism) made out of plastic?
This is great if you use anything containing essential oils since they need to be in glass bottles.
Brilliant idea from Betty and then lots of great ideas to make this something I’m going to do today. I’m speaking of course about running out to get a liquor bottle to make it work :-).
I found this because my Naturally It’s Clean plastic spray bottles, all 4 of them, won’t spray. Came across this by accident but so glad I did. Thanks everyone!!
Where did you find a glass spray bottle you can buy I can’t find one any where?
Hi Betty… You could put some silicone caulking where the plastic comes through the metal cover and that just may make it spill proof. It works for other things, why not that?
I dont Have aun plástico bottles or spray bottles arponad so How do i do this?
http://www.abundanthealth4u.com/Blue_8_oz_Glass_with_Black_Trigger_Spray_Top_p/9176.htm
they have trigger pump 8 oz blue glass spray bottles for $1.55 each. S/H is more economical if you buy 10 or so.
why would you cut apart a spray bottle AND a jar to make 2 things into one thing. that seems a little wasteful to me. its a cute idea and all. but wouldnt it make more sense to just REUSE the original spray bottle and then save the jar for something else???
You shouldn’t store anything that contains essential oils in plastic, as essential oils degrade the plastic (and many, many people make cleaning supplies with essential oils). Plus, many people don’t want to store ANYTHING in plastic, because of the potential for hormone disruptors. Unfortunately, there’s no way to get around it with the tube, but it’s much less problematic than an entire spray bottle. And that … is why.
I think this is Great!
Since cleaners and food stored in plastic usually absor the plastic!
Yuck! ( look it up, one of the main reason BPA is a no-no! It gets absorbed into the food)
If you have a jewelry saw, or could borrow one, you could drill or punch only one hole and cut a nice perfect circle. If you also have jewelry files, or could borrow some, you could file the edges so they’re safer to work with. I have an inexpensive frame jewelry saw, use it a lot.
Fantastic, and all other ideas regarding how to make glass bottle spray comes from this one. Thank you, I was looking in all the web for glassy spray bottle and this is a very good suggestion.Thank you
i SO love this!
i keep my liquid dishwashing soap in a vintage glass soda bottle with cork pourer in the top and some handsoap in another, not so vintage glass bottle, that used an old lotion bottle screw-top that fit marvelously… after MUCH trial and error, LOL!
thanks for this great idea!
thanks for all your great tips….and keeping a sense of humor, too!!! i can’t wait to try them out!
I just can’t wait to fill these cute little thingies with home made cleaning stuff!
I have been using the empty bottles of the hand wash soap & the liquid dish detergent for a very long time. I just buy the 1 gallon size detergents & keep refilling the old bottles. So & buy 1 gallon each & lasts me about 2 years each, before I need to buy more (or whenever it gets empty. I date the gallon jars when I first open them). Now I’ll start reusing the window cleaning bottles too. & will use those body scrub jars & large hand cream jars to store the all purpose cleaner paste, 1 in each bathroom & 1 in the kitchen with their own sponges, so that I have no reason not to clean. And now I know what to do with the leftover coke. I sometimes get it for the parties, but never drink the stuff myself. Will any soda work? I mean does it have to be coke, or pepsi, sprite, mountain dew, any thing will work to clean the toilet bowl?
Love the idea!! Is so fab, and sometimes (if you are lucky) at homewares shops, you can find oil sprayers, glass jars with spray heads attached and a lid that pumps to pressurize them, I got a few for less than 3$ each(at the end of season sales), so I now use those for eco-friendly cleaners, and they are great, but for my other cleaners I will be using your idea!! and yes, the pictures are fantastic!!! I didnt know exactly what to do until I saw the pictures, and I too would be inclined to just run a bead of sealant around the top, just in case!
Dear Betty, You sound a very inspiring human being.
Finally someone hit the nail truly on the head.Thank you very much for you very clear straight forward info. I will do my best to share with others your sensible and thoughtful suggestions.
This is just bad-ass!! I love it!
This is soooo awesome! My 5 year old and I are having a ball creating new, fun and pretty ways to clean! And, by the way, this could be the best site ever!!! Thanks
I LOVE THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Any excuse to use the cordless drill is a great DIY project for me. 🙂 I’m going to try my spray tops on every glass bottle I can find, and if I can’t find one that fits, I have a number of jars that are going to meet the drill. 🙂
Genius! How did you ever think of how to pull this off? I too saw glass jar soap dispensers and thought “Oooh I should do that”.
A little tip, to insure the metal doesn’t cut you and or no leaking, try duct taping around the part where the metal meets the plastic. The outside though. In my experience duct tape has helped me with everything haha.
I love that this also uses recycling because my mom and I both save glass jars like salsa and stuff to try and reuse so I wouldn’t even have to buy a new jar!
I figured this would be as good a place as any to post my favorite household container hack (although it’s plastic, not glass). I use old Method foaming hand soap containers for my Dr. Bronner’s soap. I put about a half inch of soap in the bottom, and then fill the rest up with water. Its the perfect dilution, never clogs, and stretches your soap, too. The soap comes out in a nice foamy texture, just right for a hand wash. Kids love it too. It’s the only soap dispenser I’ve had in the house for 5 years running.
I think I’ll try the castile and coconut sorta ‘poo in it next.
I need to do this. Maybe I’ll put the foaming handle into a jar! Of course, now I have to go buy a Method soap… at least I’ll get lots of use out of it.
A note on the sorta-poo: if you let it sit for more than an hour, it kind of separates out. It still foams and washes, but it looks a bit… grainy. I’m not sure why.
However you got so great, well…just keep it up.
I love everything about this! But you know what I especially loved? The caption under the sawed-off plastic bottle – emo. HI-larious!
Love it. Keep on with your smart brains, Crunchy B!
😉
U r brilliant. I love this. I make my cleaners and I always feel weird about putting them in plastic. And I hate to buy glass because I feel I will break it. But I won feel bad about breaking recycled bottles…hopefully I don’t. Ever drink kombucha tea, I love their glass bottles for putting salsa in and drinking homemade juice out of, just taste better out of a glass when on the run, don’t wanna take a glass from the cupboard.
Thanks so muh
What an awesome idea! I’ve often been frustrated at how expensive glass products are over plastic. Great job.
WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so so so impressed!!! can’t wait to make several of these!
thanks so much for sharing!
This spells badness for a clumsy crunchy like me. I’m ALWAYS dropping the cleaners I use, and if it’s glass, it’ll break, and I’ll get cut, and the only thing getting cleaned will be the floor. D:
But I love your emo pictures. Even though emo is short for emotional, that glass bottle actually looks quite stoic, with emo setting and photo composition.
You totally inspire me and always always impress the heck out of me! I reuse glass bottles all the time but I live in fear of losing the ONE SINGLE LID that fits each one. That’s why I LOVE mason jars: regular or wide-mouth…period. Regardless of jar size. For those who are concerned with the weight of the big jar… maybe try the 1/2 pint size jars and just refill them from a bigger bottle?
Like a few others, I realized that glass bottles work well 🙂 My Ex-Roommate loved his wine, and I could not stand to throw glass out so I saved them. I discovered that the sprayer I had fitted on top, so I have my ACV diluted in water in the wine bottle in my bathroom for our hair rinse 🙂 Thankfully the bottle is pretty sturdy even after its dropped a few times. Though you need dark colors for Hydrogen peroxide so I put the sprayer on the standard bottle for not having to glop for use in cleaning/disinfecting. As always, your pictures are epically cool
I love your ingenuity! 🙂
I got a light too while reading! I don’t know how to use a drill, so I felt a bit desperate, but then I looked at my pretty pink lavender infused vinegar in my recycled ACV glass bottle and got an idea. What if, magically, the sprayer would screw on my bottle? And it DID!!!! The bottle is kind of heavy though, so I tried on a smaller glass bottle (ex-juice bottle) and it worked too! 🙂
Awesome! I will be trying this ASAP!
OR…..you can put your sprayer on an old glass bottle. Mine fit an old Jones soda, but it looks like it would fit several of the vinegar/oil bottles in the cupboard as well. I didn’t want to stick my sprayer in all of them, so can’t say for sure! My sprayer bottle (plastic) was shorter than the soda bottle, though, so I don’t have the drain-to-the-last-drop capabilities of yours! Hadn’t ever thought to try until this post, though…..
I also thought, if you had one, you could use a hole saw to cut the hole in the lid, or a jig/saber saw. Then you wouldn’t have the sharp pointy bits of metal, although it would still be sharp. Just for those who were concerned about that.
Wait. Seriously? Your sprayer actually screwed on to a Jones soda bottle? THIS IS FANTASTIC!
I tried screwing mine on to all types of smaller-mouthed bottles around here (even went so far as to try it on a couple of different-sized spice bottles) and it was a no-go everywhere I went. But now that you mention it, I wonder if it wouldn’t fit on a Bragg’s vinegar bottle. Checking now.
Ho-lee crap! It fits perfectly on a Bragg’s vinegar bottle. Screws in and holds it like magic. That must’ve been the ONLY bottle in my kitchen I didn’t check to see if the size worked.
Thank you for being so brilliant!
LOL! You’re welcome! It’s too bad all the bottle openings and threads don’t ALL match…..I guess that would make life too easy…….
So good to know! Thanks for posting. The other added benefit to Braggs is it is dark bottle and I’ve heard that dark bottles help oils stay fresh longer.
But they might contain lead. Trader Joes balsamic vinegar bottles have a California Prop 65 warning at my local store. You might want to check with Bragg if they have tested their bottles for lead.
I think that’s the balsamic and not the jar itself: http://www.naturalnews.com/027683_balsamic_vinegar_lead.html
Looks like they’re not sure if it’s naturally occurring (lead seepage from the ground) or from balsamic aged in barrels for an exceptionally long time.
Also, my Bragg’s bottles aren’t dark at all. Weird.
Thanks. So it is the vinegar itself! I know some old tainted glass tableware contain lead so I just assumed it was the bottle. Phew!
It’s the balsamic vinegar, not the glass bottle, that contains the lead. All balsamic vinegars contain trace amounts of lead due to the way the vinegar is made.
Some sprayers should also fits on the Heinz glass vinegar bottles – I think there are two sizes: pint and quart. Since I use white vinegar already for cleaning, makes sense to buy that in a heinz glass bottle and away I go! BTW, my stores recently have had “hang tags” for 50 cents off on the quart bottles, which, when doubled made it about 29 cents a bottle!! yea!!
genius! now you’re an engineer too. 🙂
Okay, I don’t know HOW ON EARTH I forgot to mention this in the post, but the other VERY important reasoning for doing this is that you shouldn’t store things made with essential oils in plastic.
Essential oils eat at plastic (which degrades the bottle, but it also hastens the leaching of the chemicals in plastics into the liquid).
Ah.
What about BPA free plastics, does that make any sort of difference in the end with storage of homemade cleaning stuff and things with essential oils in them? Or is is just bad all around
I’ve read that BPA free plastics can give off estrogenic compounds, much like BPA plastics. If you’re really trying to avoid that, best to stay away from plastic period.
essential oils actually go off in plastic & clear glass jars, thats why majority of them come in very dark glass containers etc, because the sun doesnt penetrate through the colour of the glass, causing the oil to not oxidize.
Well I found that a root beer bottle fit my sprayer so that takes care of the plastic and allows for a dark glass. Thanks for the help!
I have experience with this first hand. I had a plastic spray bottle filled with tea tree, water and vinegar and it ate right threw the bottle.
Ah, it all comes together. I feel like the jar would be too heavy though. I have weak, dainty hands that get crampy and tired just operating a standard plastic spray bottle and I’m afraid the added weight of the glass would further hinder my abilities. Might have to make one of those pump jars though. Perfect timing as my hand soap bars are getting mighty skinny.
You might try a smaller glass bottle and see if your sprayer will fit right on top….it wouldn’t be as awkward or heavy for your small hands…….
Hehe my hands aren’t small, just feeble.
GENIUS!
Very clever – it clicked as soon as I realized that you were including the top of the plastic bottle into your design. I would still be tempted to put a sealant around the edges of the hole (because I happen to be a upside down sprayer type of person), but this is a very ingenious and simple design. Gosh, I’m just loving all of your crafty posts lately – not that I don’t love your other posts, but I love crafts so much.
~Ness
My greatest irritation with reusing plastic bottles (like from 7th generation products), is that I can never get the label completely off. This is great! Thanks!
Me too! I hate commercial product labels on homemade stuff. It just seems wrong. 🙂
Lemon essential oil is GREAT for removing labels and any other sticky/greasy mess.
OK, that’s stinkin’ brilliant!
omg this is so coolness!! how did you think of it ever??? I will definitely be keeping my stuff in this from now on. going to try it now.
Alright, alright… dumb question but –
If you already have a plastic spray bottle from which you’re pilfering the spray top – why not just reuse the plastic bottle?
Did you read the beginning of the post? : )
Ha! No, I skipped to the instructions. *blush* Thanks. 🙂 (There were purdy pictures, my wittle brain skipped to the purdy pictures!)
Heh. No worries. I do that too sometimes!
I made one from a household cleaner spray and screwed it onto a 750ml liquor bottle..perfect fit..choose any design…most liquor bottles have the same size lids..and keep the list for storage!