Tales of the Cups

Lileks today talks about his coffee cup of the week and asks his commentors:

My favorite coffee cups have a meaning that might seem odd to someone else; my least-used has the most emotional connection; my most frequently used means nothing at all.

So share your mug stories! Worst, best, faves, etc.

C’mon, man. This is a blog. I’ve gone on about my coffee cup accumulation multiple times:

Out of My Cups (2012), wherein I talk about maybe divesting a couple of the plastic travel mugs I owned (spoiler alert: I got rid of two of the four).

I Am The Coffee Party I Was Waiting For about how many coffee cups I had back then and why I should not get rid of them (spoiler alert: I did not).

A couple of notes since the writing of the last:

  • Every year, I do the library’s Winter Reading Challenge which results in a mug; I’m about halfway through this year’s (as a reminder, although the rules say you only have to read 5 books from the 15 categories, I try to get all 15 before turning the form in). I have quite a collection of mugs from years past:

    I actually use some of them for tea, miso soup, or anything I brew downstairs, so they see some use.
     

  • In 2013, the boys would have been seven and five. I mentioned that I might get rid of some Monopoly themed cups, but I did not. And soon thereafter, my youngest, who had been exposed to the game, was delighted when he discovered them. They became his favorite cups for apple cider and hot chocolate (briefly).
     
  • I’ve only gotten a couple of additional cups since then: A cup for winning a trivia night in 2014, the plain white coffee house-like cup I got for the photo on the cover of Coffee House Memories, and a couple of additional cups that were part of the gift sets, including a camoflauge cup that my brother gave me for Christmas the year before last, come to mind.

However, the number of cups that I use has dropped.

I’ve gotten back into the habit of drinking coffee from the same cup for days on end (which was basically how I did it when I worked outside the home, using the same giant Marquette University plastic mug day after day with but a rinsing in between). Since I’ve been underemployed for a couple of months and cut the K-Cups from daily expenditures when the company I worked for no longer covered them, I have been using the drip maker upstairs and have left the cup up there, generally full, as well. So I don’t finish the last cup I pour on any given day–I start the next day by slamming that (followed by any cold coffee left in the pot). So it’s rare that the cup on the counter is empty to put into the dishwasher. I tend to use a faded Washington Times mug I got when I subscribed twenty years ago or a similar large mug whose source I have forgotten. So I use those two cups and one or two of the Library Winter Reading Challenge mugs for most of my coffee/hot brew needs.

Still, I cannot really cull them because they’re personal relics.

One thing I really do want to cull, though, is the insulated tumblers. We have received a bunch as swag or for various charitable contributions, but since I work from home, I don’t need something like it for a commute (and I use a plastic insulated Green Bay Packers cup I got from my brother some years back to take coffee on the long ride home for those long trips where I want to start out with coffee). They replaced the plastic water bottle swag we got previously for chartiable contributions and in 5K gift bags, and they occupy basically the same cabinet space. But we hardly ever use them. A couple of plastic bottles fit into bicycle water holders, but that’s about it.

Ah, well, we do have the space for them, so I don’t have to make a decision now.

UPDATE: As I was writing this post, it made me want coffee. As I headed upstairs, I told my beautiful wife about the post, and she mentioned she has another insulated metal tumbler in her office that she just received. So maybe we don’t have that much room after all.

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