Labels for jars

How labels create calm in your jars

Do you also have a collection of jars in your kitchen where you can’t quite remember if it’s all-purpose flour or cake flour, sugar or powdered sugar? You aren't the only one. As soon as you pour dry goods and spices into identical jars, the original packaging you usually recognize the product by disappears, and the guessing game begins. Labels for jars solve exactly that: a small self-adhesive sticker on each jar, so you know at a glance what is what.

Labels are about two things at once. The practical: you gain an overview, and you avoid having to sniff three identical jars to find the right one. And the aesthetic: when all your jars share the same font and style, the cupboard or shelf gets a calm, uniform look instead of a jumble of different bags and packages. It is good energy flow in practice, and it is aesthetics for the soul as much as for the eyes.

In this collection, you will find Dry Goods labels for flour, grains, pasta, and sugar, Spice labels for the spice rack, and Expiry Date labels, where you write the date yourself. Together, they cover most of what you store in jars in the kitchen.

What a label actually is

A label is simply a self-adhesive sticker that you place on the outside of a jar to show what is inside. The word is often used interchangeably with sticker or tag, but the idea is the same: a small piece with text that sticks to the jar, so the content can be identified without you having to open the lid.

The difference between a random sticker from a drawer and a label made for the kitchen lies in three things. It must be able to withstand the environment it is in, i.e., humidity from the sink and cold from the refrigerator. It must look uniform from jar to jar so that the overall impression is calm. And it must be removable without leaving a sticky residue if you ever want to change the contents or use the jar for something else.

The difference between labels for dry goods, spices, and expiry dates

The three types in the collection each cover a different part of the kitchen, and most people benefit from combining them.

Dry goods labels go on the larger jars in the cupboard: flour, oats, rice, pasta, sugar, nuts. These are the items you buy in bags and pour into jars to keep them dry and create a calmer cupboard. Here, a label is worth its weight in gold, because a bag of sugar and a bag of salt are indistinguishable once they are both in identical jars.

Spice labels are intended for smaller spice jars. There are typically many spices, they are placed close together, and the names often look alike, so clear labeling is extra important here. If you want to dive deeper into this specific part, we have gathered more information in our guide to spice labels - create calm and an overview in the kitchen today.

Expiry date labels are the type you write on yourself. You use these when it is not the content, but the shelf life, that you want to remember: an opened container in the fridge, a portion you have frozen, or dry goods with a date you want to keep an eye on. They help you avoid food waste because you can see immediately when something needs to be used.

Can the labels withstand humidity and dishwashing?

This is one of the questions that most often determines whether a label is worth its place, because a sticker that curls up and falls off when the jar gets wet creates more mess than order. Kitchen labels are made to withstand the environment they are in, i.e., the moisture that inevitably gets on a jar used daily and the cold in a refrigerator.

When you wash the jar itself, it is a good habit to wipe over the label with a damp cloth instead of soaking the jar or putting it through a full dishwasher cycle. The inside of the jar can easily be washed as usual. This way, the label lasts the longest, and you maintain the uniform look over time without having to relabel the jars.

How to remove labels without sticky residue

One of the advantages of good kitchen labels is that they can be removed when you want to change contents or rearrange your system. If you want to avoid the sticky residue that sometimes remains, it helps to take it easy: pull the label off slowly and at a flat angle instead of pulling straight out.

If there is still a little glue left, you can warm the area slightly, for example with a cloth dipped in hot water, and then rub the rest away. This allows you to use the jar again with a new label without it looking used. That is the whole point of a system: it should adapt when your needs change, not lock you in.

Labels and jars belong together

A label only really comes into its own when it is on a jar already chosen to create calm and an overview. If you already use our storage jars for dry goods or our spice jars, labels provide the final layer that ties everything together into a unified, calm expression.

This is also where the simple lifestyle becomes tangible. You don't have to overhaul the entire kitchen at once. Start with one cupboard, pour the dry goods into identical jars, put a label on each, and notice how much more of an overview you get from that one little thing. If you would rather start somewhere else, the same labels can easily be used around the home, and you can find inspiration in our guide to labels for storage - how to create calm and an overview.

If you are in doubt about what fits your specific jars, we are always ready to help.