5 Sustainable Tips for Maintaining Your Candles

Aya's 5 star-rated candles have been best-sellers since we introduced them to our collection of sustainable gifts last year! Customers love them for their warm aroma, long burn time, and beautiful, eco-friendly packaging. With the right maintenance, candles are truly the gift that keeps on giving. To help you make the most of your candles, we decided to share some tips on how to extend their life and troubleshoot some common candle-burning errors. Keep reading for our 5 tips to help you reduce your candle waste and burn responsibly!

Tip #1 - Wax Melting

We all hate to see our candles burn out. And oftentimes there is still a good amount of wax with the fragrance you love remaining in the jar after the wick reaches its end. Instead of discarding the candle or replacing it, you can get countless additional hours of your favorite candle fragrances by warming and melting the old wax in an oil burner or wax warmer.

Tip #2 - Wick Too Low

If the candle wick is covered in wax or too low to light, try using a heat gun, candle lighter, or even a hair dryer to melt the wax around the wick. Once melted, you may pour or scoop the excess wax out with a butter knife or a similar tool. Now that the wick is exposed, you can light and enjoy! (See Tip #1 for how to make use of that excess wax)

Tip #3 - Prevent Tunneling

Tunneling happens when a candle burns down only the centermost part of the wax, leaving the surrounding part of the candle unused. The most important way to prevent this is by not letting a candle burn longer than four hours at a time. Wax has memory, so after the first few times tunneling is hard to stop.

Giving the wick a slight trim between uses will also help promote an even burn. If you leave the curls at the top of the wick (that happen after burning for long periods of time) the flame will not burn evenly the next time you light it, and will increase the risk of tunneling.

Tip #4 - Cleaning Out Candle Jar

Each of our candles is in a beautiful reusable 9 oz amber glass container with a gold lid. To clean the wax out of the jar you have a few options. Try to remove the remaining wax piece from the jar at room temperature using a butter knife or a similar tool to lift it out. If that doesn’t work you can: 

(1) Place the jar in the freezer for a few hours. Afterward it should be easier to break the wax into a couple chunks and lift it out of the jar with a butter knife or a similar tool. 

(2) You can use boiling water to remove the wax. Place the candle on a heat-safe surface then pour boiling water into the jar, leaving extra space at the top. The hot water will melt the wax so that it can float to the top, then once the water has cooled you can remove the leftover wax chunk. 

(3) You can also remove the wax by placing the candle jar in a pot of boiling water for a few minutes to soften the wax and release it from the bottom of the container, then using a butter knife or a similar tool it should easily lift out.

Once the remainder of wax has been removed, the jar can be cleaned with dish soap and water.

Tip #5 - Reusing Candle Jar

After cleaning out the candle jar, consider reusing it as storage for supplies, accessories, or items in the kitchen, bathroom, office, and around the house in general— anywhere that small items may need to be stored. Things like cotton swabs, bobby pins, safety pins, paper clips, toothpicks, hair-ties, and more would be perfect. You can even use our candle jars as small planters!