Skip to main content

My mug shot

Image
By
This is every mug I own.


How many did I buy? Zero. They seem to just appear.

I don't even drink tea or coffee. In winter I have might have a hot chocolate or cocoa. So 9 mugs seems like a lot.

How does this happen?

I reckon most mugs are gifts. There are two reasons for this.

1. It's a safe bet. People need to drink. It's kind of like buying your dad socks for father's day. But the difference is that socks wear out and need replacing. Cups don't. One of these mugs i received as a kid in the 90s. It still works fine. Now it has 8 friends.

2. It's often for what's on the mug. It might be a greeting card-style message, or a sports team logo, or something humorous. It's a good thing that something functional can also provide an inspiring message or pleasant memory as you use it.

But the problem comes when we have too much. If I use the cup my sister gave me at Christmas, then I'm not using the 'awesome brother' one she already gave me. And I'm not using the one mum gave me either.

So what to do?

If it were a different item I'd take photos of the memorable/sentimental ones, scale down to what I need and recycle the rest. But ceramic cups aren't recyclable and throwing them into landfill seems just as wasteful as having a shelf full of cups sitting untouched for 9 months each year.

I've considered selling some, but doesn't everyone else also have too many mugs? Who would want more?

What do you think? How many mugs do you have?
Would you like one with cartoon bees on it?
Read more about:

Comments

  1. Anonymous24 August 2018 at 19:51

    This is funny, we also have more than we need. I used to like having mugs that all match, but now I love the story behind every mug that I have.

    In the spirit of recycling and being green I've seen cafes at universities with a basket of old mugs at the counter that you can use (and return, if you want) instead of the plastic cups. Maybe it can be donated to a cafe like that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. david1 September 2018 at 15:31

    Hi Anonymous.
    Thanks for the tip. That's a good idea. I'll keep an eye out for a cafe like that.
    Also, I did manage to sell the one with the bees on it. A teacher wanted a mug for her classroom desk for pencils and thought the bees would be a design the (small) kids would love.
    Far better than it sitting in the back of my cupboard.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Will robots take your job?

By
The future could be very different. It's one reason I started this blog. What will technology mean for jobs? For incomes? For society? So I was excited to find Will Robots Take Your Job? at my local library. What does the book say? There's always been technological change and we've always found jobs. As the more laborious jobs were taken by machines, we took on higher skilled jobs, moving further up the "skill ladder". The main question is whether this time is different. Will the "skill ladder" continue to have higher rungs for humans to move on to? Will these rungs appear as quickly as the current rungs disappear? Either way we're headed for significant disruption. Either large-scale re-training of our workforce or massive unemployment. The author despairs that our leaders seem not to talk about this - and worse still, not have a plan for it. Farmers or horses? In 1870 about 75% of Americans worked in agriculture and used 25 million hors
Post a Comment
Read more

Shop less. Live more.

By
October is Buy Nothing New Month , and that's their slogan: Shop Less. Live More. This quote about consumption is doubly true. There's the hours we spend to earn the money to spend. Then there's the hours bustling around shopping centres and malls searching out the thing we want (or that advertising has told us we want). Of course there's also the issue of where we put all this stuff we buy. Do we just buy a bigger house (with a bigger mortgage) or do we put it in storage? "The Japanese may have tidiness but in America we have storage lockers - our only growth industry." - Marge Simpson . I found these stats about the US storage industry . I find it such a waste that after spending so much to buy all this stuff we then spend another $22 billion to store it. Shocking. Clearly we need to be less addicted to purchasing. Buy Nothing New Month is a great way to start. Are you with me?
Post a Comment
Read more

Inheriting Clutter

By
This book stood out on the library shelf. Massive clutter can create anxiety at any time, let alone when it has to be dealt with during one of the toughest points of life. Author Julie Hall deals with estates for a living. Her book covers the nitty-gritty of dealing with all that stuff. It also covers caring for parents while they are here and what to do to make life easier for them, your siblings and you. Parent Logic We may wonder why parents keep so much stuff. Julie explains that our parents (having grown up in a different time) have their reasons. Often they had to 'go without' as kids and so don't want to 'go without' again. Sometimes they think items will become valuable with age.  Also there's the thought "the more I leave the kids the more they will have" . This is obviously mathematically true - but whether that's a good thing is questionable. Ironically, this admirable quality of aversion to waste often ends up causing waste. Items get s
Post a Comment
Read more