Keeping Calm To Carry On - The One On Cups

 Once upon a fairy tale, there were magical creatures that came in to whisk away cookie crumbs, clear and clean out the refrigerator, and wash to sparkling all the dishes.  And everyone lived happily ever after.

That's a fairy tale I made up, in case you couldn't tell.

In my reality, we sweep several times a day to keep the crumbs at bay, the fridge gets cleaned out when I can't find casserole dishes anywhere else, and dirty dishes accumulate at horrific rates!

Thankfully, my children help with the sweeping and we stumbled across a fabulous system for lessening the number of dirty dishes.

Thre are many methods to keeping homes with lots of kids in supply of drinking containers.  We have gone through more than one rendition of water bottles, starting with sippy cups, graduating to Camelbaks (which we loved and lost), then to Klean Kanteen (which we love but are in the process of losing), and finally, I quit.

I mean I didn't quit watering them, I just quit buying drinking containers.  The kids still drink plenty of fluids.  They just drink it from regular ol' glasses.

Only it got to where we were going through 20 (or more) a day.  No joke.  Those people would use one, set it down, get thirsty later, and grab a clean glass.

Lather, rinse, repeat. 

Y'all... we drink water almost exclusively.  I'd walk into the kitchen and see 11 glasses partially filled with water.

I might have said (loudly) a time or two something to the effect of "WHY do you people need to use 6 glasses a day...EACH?"  or "WHAT ON EARTH???"

Or, you know.... something like that.

Ahem. 

And then, one day, I had an epiphany. 

You know those little silicone bracelet things you collect from random places?  I sent the children in search of 7 of them (we call them bands).  They came back with about twenty of them.  I then showed them how to put the band on their glass and informed them that each morning when they got their glass out of the cabinet, they needed to place a band on it.  This was to be their glass for The Whole Entire Day.

The bands are stretchy enough that my (then) 4 year old could handle banding her own glass and they are totally dishwasher safe (we drape them over a tine on the top rack).  It's been a beautiful year of banded glasses at our house!

I won't lie.... sometimes somebody has a bout with forgetfulness and I'll find an extra glass or four running around.  It makes me a bit cranky, but I just do my best to remember that this is still way better than the eighty-eleven we were doing for a while. 

The fridge (and it's contents) is still an issue...