Re-purpose Baby Food Jars To Store Your Miscellaneous Hardware (And prevent archeologists from finding your skeletonized remains)

As a boy, I always loved going into my uncle's workshop.  His father built (and I mean "built" literally) the home where my cousins were raised and where he and my aunt still live.  His workshop contains equipment accumulated over two generations and his work bench shelves are lined with jars filled with hundreds of random pieces of hardware.

There's something really nice about looking around that shop and thinking about how the equipment and hardware has been used and about all of the projects and all of the problem solving that's gone on there.

I wanted to recreate some of that same feeling in my much smaller shop.  I don't have a lot of equipment but I do have a growing collection of miscellaneous, loosely organized hardware.  To make my shop extra cozy, I decided to use some of J and D's very first baby food jars to store my odds and ends.

I was sharing my idea with my grandmother and she suggested I mount the jars to the bottom of each shelf to free up all the space below.  Hey, I guess they're right; senior citizens, although slow and dangerous behind the wheel, can still serve a purpose*.

Here's how to do it:

Figure out where you want each jar to go.  Remember, if you're putting up a line of jars you'll need enough space for your fingers so you can twist off the jar when you want to take it down.

TIP: You need two screws in each lid so that the lid stays in place when you twist off the jar.  If you only place one screw then the lid will rotate around that single screw and you'll be caught in an infinite loop of jar twisting and archeologists will find your skeletonized remains many years later grasping the still firmly in-place jar.

Use one of your smaller drill bits, hold the lid up to the bottom of the shelf and drill the first of two holes.  Don't drill both holes yet!  Get that first screw into the first hole and then drill hole number two.

That's all there is to it.  Finish each jar before installing the next so you can double check your placement and spacing.

*if you're reading this grandmom**, sorry.  That's a quote from the movie Dumb & Dumber that I couldn't resist.

**my grandmother may be reading this because she is on top of this whole technology thing.  She's actually more on top of it then her daughter (my mother***) or my mother in-law****.

*** if you're reading this mom, sorry (but it's true.  double sorry)

**** eM's mom is terrific.  I really lucked out!*****

*****I'm not just saying that because she may be reading this*******

******I'm trapped in an infinite footnote loop and archeologists will find my skeletonized remains

***