To say that mason jars, once used solely by farmers and home canners, are everywhere would be a gross understatement. Thanks to Pinterest, they're now ubiquitous at weddings (particularly those located inside a barn), restaurants, and high-end home goods stores. Walk into any hipster's house, and you're sure to see one being used as a terrarium [1].

Despite their overwhelming reach, we just never expected they'd also find a much smaller demographic: babies.

Laura and Sebastian Belmar, parents who sought a nonplastic alternative to baby bottles but found safer glass ones to be prohibitively expensive, decided to create a prototype of a nontoxic baby bottle using a mason jar.

But before you assume that this is just another gimmick to steal money away from DIY-loving hipsters, the Mason Bottle — which won't go into production until the couple's Kickstarter campaign [2] raises $25,000 — really does serve many surprising time-saving (and cost-effective!) purposes for new parents.

• The wide mouth of mason jars makes them easy to clean, without the need for special bottle brushes or pipe cleaners.
• Because mason jars are temperature-resistant, extra breast milk can be stored in the same bottle you used to serve the baby — in both the fridge and freezer.
• Breastfeeding parents won't have to deal with plastic milk storage bags that are messy, prone to leaking, and single use.
• The width of the jars makes them a natural fit for a baby's hands.
• Parents who already own mason jars — which happen to come in the standard four-ounce and eight-ounce bottle sizes — only need to purchase the nipples!
• The nipple can invert into the jar for easy storage and sterile transport so that you don't even need a cap, which makes the bottle completely plastic-free.
• When the jars are done serving as baby bottles, they can be repurposed into containers for baby food or as sippy cups.

Or, of course, for your holiday centerpiece [3], or to make candleholders, or as a cocktail shaker [4], or to mix salads [5], or for . . .