You know how when you finish a painting project, you often have a little bit of paint leftover? You want to keep it around for touch-ups, but you don’t want to store a big bucket for that small amount of paint.
Well, I learned from a friend of mine that it’s smart to pour the leftover paint into a saved food jar.
That jar of Cloud White is my kitchen cabinet paint, and it has come in so handy over the years when I need to touch up dings in my cabinets.
You can use any sort of jar that’s got a nice tight lid that will keep the air out. I’ve only used glass, but I’ve read that plastic containers work as well.
Pour the paint in, write the brand and color of the paint on the jar or lid with a sharpie, and you’re good to go.
This saves paint storage space, and in my experience (this is the money-saving part), it also helps to keep the paint from drying out. It’s hard to get the used paint cans to seal up properly, and a small amount of paint in a not-quite-sealed large bucket tends to dry out quickly.
(So much air in the bucket!)
And then when you need to do a touch-up, you have to go buy more paint.
Obviously, you need to be careful to avoid breaking the jars if you use glass, but you have to be careful with stored paint in buckets too. It’s not like you can tip over paint buckets willy-nilly. 
If you use glass, just make sure you store the jars in a safe place where they won’t get knocked off and break (especially if your storage room, like mine, has a hard floor).
P.S. In yesterday’s post, I mentioned the Grove food storage bags. Yesterday, Grove sent me an email letting my know that even though I’m not doing a campaign with Grove right now, you will still get some Mrs. Meyer’s freebies if you sign up for a new account through my affiliate link.
So, if you want to sign up and get some of the bags like I have, make sure you do it through this link!
Susan says
Great idea! I’ve been in the process of repainting our house, and will definitely put this to use. We only have a small closet to store paint/supplies and I’m already running out of room – not anymore!
Linda Sand says
Here’s my best painting tip: When you get interrupted and know you won’t be back today, wrap your paint brush in foil and put it in the freezer. When thawed you can go right back to work.
As to jars, don’t use a mayonnaise jar; it has to be one that would hold liquids like a pickle jar or a spaghetti sauce jar. But air it out well first if you don’t want your paint to smell like pickles. Putting a charcoal briquette in the jar with the lid on is a good way to remove smells.
Monica says
Yes! I do this and glass baby food jars are my favorite for this purpose!
Michele says
I love Tuesday Tips!
Profesora H-B says
This is brilliant! We have a giant bucket of paint in our garage and it is SUCH a pain to do a quick touch-up. Problem solved!
JD says
We had a lot of leftover paint after our house was built. I poured a quart of each color into jars and took the rest to the waste collection “paint day.” I have been so glad I saved some paint, so many times! I forget who first gave me the idea, but it’s a really good one.
Jennifer@thefrugaldribble says
Good idea, I don’t have room for all the large paint cans I have in my storage closet right now.
getting there says
I wouldn’t use plastic. We did that once. Eventually the paint ate through the plastic and leaked all over the place. It was in the garage and we didn’t notice it right away until we found the big blob of hardened paint with random things encased in it.
Kristen says
I wondered about that. There are probably some plastics that would hold up ok, but I don’t know which ones!
Tricia says
When we moved into our current apartment, there were 4 plastic Skippy PB jars with paint in them, each labeled by room, sitting in the cabinets. They have been there at least 6 years, and are holding up fine. Give them some good shakes and the paint is ready to apply. It’s been fantastic for touch ups and uses so little space
Mrs. Kiwi says
Thanks for the tip! We are in the midst of a BIG home renovation so it will be nice when we can get rid of the large paint cans when we are done!
Gina says
I did this once and used a canning jar with canning lid and rim – bad idea. Had I used a one piece lid, like you did, it would have worked out better!!
WilliamB says
I’m glad you said this – I have excess canning jars and excess paint. Now I know not to do it but not why – what happened?
Gina says
Maybe they were stored too long? Too hot in the garage? I don’t know but I could not get the tops off! A schmear of vaseline on the rims might have helped…
Suz says
We have used old canning jars and spaghetti sauce jars, all with metal lids – for the paint we stored inside, it has been great. 10+ years and it’s still working fine for easy touch-ups! But, when we stored some jars in the garage, those jars got rusty and hard to open (plus we worried that rusk flecks had dropped into the paint). So you might be ok if you plan to store it inside…
Ms. Frugal Asian Finance says
Wow this is a super cool tip. Food jars aren’t for food only!
We haven’t done any painting projects at our house since we bought the house in a move-in condition. But I will keep this in mind for the future. Thanks for sharing, Kristen!
Ramona @ Personal Finance Today says
Hmm, really great idea. We have some leftover paint and quite some jars. It would be wiser to use them like this, since we’ll clearly need the paint in the near future
Karen. says
Maybe 12ish years ago, I used a metal coffee can with a plastic lid to hold paint in use, poured from a 5-gallon bucket. Would you believe that paint is still good? Must be an exceptional plastic lid seal.
Jennifer@thefrugaldribble says
That’s a good idea to store a bit larger amount of paint. Seems like we always have a few jars and cans laying around.
Jennifer@thefrugaldribble says
Oh, yes! This is great. There is always something that needs touched up. Opening that big paint can is the reason I don’t do more touch-ups. Also, it would be so much easier to shake a little bottle to remix the paint. Painting is never ending*sigh. Just don’t sit that bottle down where your kids may accidently sit it in the refrigerator. It looks vaguely similar to ranch dressing, lol. I love that this will take up less space. Our paint stash is just getting out of hand.
~Lisa~ says
My mom would store paint in jars too. My husband prefers the large paint buckets to store paint, no matter how much or how little. He built a “paint storage” closet for said paint. Maybe it’s a man thing?
Oceana says
Haha. Funny.