Why You'll Want To Consider Freezing Your Candle Before Lighting It
Nothing feels quite as good as dimming the lights, kicking your feet up, and lighting a wonderful scented candle after a long day. But less wonderful is watching just how quickly that candle melts away, especially when most candles seem to cost just short of a small fortune. But there is one easy trick to extending the life of your candles, and it doesn't require any fancy equipment: Just pop your candle into the freezer.
By putting the candle in the freezer, you allow the wax to freeze over, which hardens it. So as the flame makes its way down the wick, the wax is considerably slower to melt. You'll need to let it chill in the freezer between burns, but your candle won't burn away as quickly as before. And that means you'll get to enjoy your candle for longer, saving you money and another trip to the candle store!
Extending candle life is a matter of timing
You will need to give the candle enough time to freeze over for this hack to work, meaning it could need to be in the freezer from anywhere from two to eight hours. Additionally, the bigger the candle, the more time you'll need. The good news is that you can't overdo it in the freezer, so just pop the candle in there the morning or evening before you want to use it.
In addition to giving your candle a trip to the freezer aisle, there are a few other candle preservation tips that can make your candle last longer. First, it's essential to let your candle burn for quite a while the first time you light it, allowing the entire diameter of the candle to melt into the burn pool. It may seem superfluous, but if you've ever had a melted candle with tons of leftover wax on the sides, it's almost certainly because the candle didn't have sufficient initial burn time.
When your candle reaches the end of its life
You can also go a little old school and use a wick trimmer. Keeping the wick short means a smaller flame, which means the candle will burn much more slowly in turn. A good rule of thumb is that if you catch your wick flinging around in the jar, it's time to give it a trim. Aim to keep your wicks ¼ of an inch tall, and you'll notice your candles keep a lot longer.
Even with all of these candle hacks, your candle will eventually melt down completely. But you can still make the most of your candle. For instance, if your wick died out before all the wax melted away, you can remove the leftover wax and pop it into a wax melting plate. To extract the wax easily, just send that burned-out candle back to the freezer. With the wax hardened, it's much easier to remove with a butter knife.