I’ve posted about my undying love for Seward Co-op’s bulk section before, but there’s one aspect of bulk section-shopping that can get a bit tiresome: weighing the jar, writing down the PLU, etc. for each item on my list takes time. Time where my cart is blocking the aisle and my anxiety level goes up with each person who has to steer around me.

A while back, I realized that our 3 types of canning jars all pretty much weigh the same, regardless of the brand:

narrow mouth quart jars= .9 lb
wide mouth quart jars= 1 lb
wide mouth pint jars= .65 lb

Armed with this knowledge, I set out to make some more permanent labels for the tops of my lids.  First I looked through our box-o-lids and found a bunch with old PLU stickers still affixed.  Then I downloaded some jar lid templates (wide mouth and narrow mouth).

I imported the templates into Adobe Illustrator, added the names, PLUs, and weights of many of the things we buy regularly, printed onto magnet sheets, and cut out the circles.  Next I found a little-used area of the refrigerator to store the labels:

I also made some blanks because I know I forgot several things.  But this should make our weekly bulk-department stop a bit more pleasant.  I made a small and large version for each of the things we buy often — that way it doesn’t matter if we only have one type of jar clean when we’re getting ready to go get groceries.  I’m ridiculously excited about this little project. It was easy and fun.