My kids are in the habit of using a new glass every time they get a drink of water.
There’s a very easy way to solve that which doesn’t involve purchasing anything new.
I really don’t know how to put this without coming off as snarky: the same liquid you fill those water glasses with is a useful cleaning agent. Simply rinse the glass off before filling it up. It doesn’t matter who used it before, so long as you rinse it, right?
A more permanent alternative: just paint a symbol on the glass.
Or you could just have a completely mismatched set of dishes (not to brag or anything).
Yeah, but we are talking about children… have you seen what those things do with their hands?
Or… you could teach your kids to remember where they left their drinking glass.
In a perfect world maybe. The issue with kids (and adults too) is they get a glass of something, finish it, and hours later come back to get another drink and then can’t tell who’s is who’s anymore from the cluster of them on the kitchen counter so they grab a clean one. Stopping to wash it is often not practical, and can be actually wasteful of water and soap to do it every time.And it may be water, juice, milk, who knows–not necessarily just a quick rinse–especially considering that by a certain age, many kids would rather eat dirt than use the same glass their sibling used without heavy washing. Marking each person’s glass with their own symbol works wonders for reducing the number of glasses used in a house–we did it back in the day.
This is much better than my method of smearing their hands with superglue!
…or my plan to handcuff mugs to my children and wife.
“If you lose this, you drink only from CUPPED HANDS. DO YOU HEAR ME?”
Yeah, but then you get into the whole “whose cupped hands are whose thing”, and you’re back to marking 'em.
Wait, are the hands still attached? Softie.
That is what i was going to say. We do have some nice matched formal glasses which rarely get used. Our everyday stuff is a bunch of mismatched stuff, often chosen by the kids themselves. One kid might be drinking from a German beer stein, the other might be using a tiki mug.
Dibs on the collectible Princess Leia cup from Circle-K!
This solution has two problems: The children need to look for their glass and can’t just pick one. And if someone not knowing the rules takes a reserved glass, we are back at square one.
It is pretty hard to remember which glass is yours when there are suddenly 3 more glasses next to it… Never been to a party?
No. No, I haven’t.
: (
Each kid can have their own place to put their glass. If they’re old enough to be getting clean glasses down from the cupboard, they’re old enough to do that.
Been using a variation on this for a while, different color hair bands on the glass. Definitely saves a lot of washed glasses. I’m kinda down on suction cups because I can’t get my GPS to stay on the frickin window!
Adults aren’t any better, really. At work there are usually half a dozen or more little plastic water cups scattered around, nobody seems to know which is which.
We use those crappy rubber wrist bands. Each of us with a different color.
The other alternative that we’ve used is hair ties, but I’ve got a house full of girls so you may not have those available.
When I was a kid…
it was a no brainer…
we had color coded Tupperware glasses.
I had to pretend my Indigo one was Purple and my youngest brother who loved Orange got to claim both the Yellows and Reds, but it worked out pretty well. We owned exactly two Indigo glasses- it would be rude for me to dirty all the glasses, in case there was company later, so I understook that I had one to use per day. Simple kid logic. It might be un-aesthetic, but there is a reason for the color-coded, brand-linked “kids” dining ware.
