A Time Saving Kitchen Tip for Drinking Glasses
This post may contain affiliate links from which I will earn a commission. Learn more in our disclosure.
You know by now that water is really important for health, right? Of course, you need to make sure that it's filtered water, but the common thought on drinking water is that you should be drinking 8 glasses of water a day.
Remember my post on the Top 5 Tips for Healthy Eating? There was drinking clean water – right at the top. Note that I said “clean water.”
Didn't know that tap water is full of a lot of stuff that I am sure you'd rather not be putting in your body? Well, this post is not for the timid, but check out Is Your Water Safe?
I try to keep myself and my family hydrated, but we quickly end up with glasses all over the place. And my kitchen is already cluttered enough without extra glasses all over the place (anyone else identifies with this? Please tell me I'm not the only one :-)). And in these super busy and financially tight times, who needs to spend extra time and money washing extra glasses because someone says, “I can't remember which glass was mine!”
And if you don't have a family, then when you have guests over, you can quickly have the same problem, right (and who wants to make a mistake of drinking out of the wrong glass during the flu season :-()?
Well, I have a simple DIY idea for you that will help you keep track of whose glass is whose and help you reduce clutter in the kitchen.
Think of this as DIY water glass “charms”. While they're not as cute, they get the job done!
This tip gets credited to my one and one-half day helper. Due to my long struggle with adrenal fatigue / fibromyalgia symptoms, things have really piled up around the house here, so I've been getting some help weekly while I get caught up. And frankly, it's been helping me pay some attention to my blog that I wouldn't be able to do otherwise while juggling homeschooling, our whole foods lifestyle, and my special needs son.
Typically, my “helper” brings her own water bottle over, but one day we were sampling homemade sugar-free lemonade (you really need to check out that recipe!). We were trying to keep glasses straight and she said, “How about this idea?”
Just put a rubber band around each glass, with a different color for each person!
Well, I posted my little idea on Twitter in response to a blogger who said she couldn't keep glasses straight in her home either.
Her response was, “I don't have enough rubber bands for all the people in my family!”
So here are some ways to adapt this to make it work, no matter how many people you have in your home.
Save all the rubber bands you get (washing them first) from produce, mail, etc. That way, you end up with a lot of colors and thicknesses
Mix and match the bands so that some people are identified by combinations (e.g. oldest son's glass has a white and a blue band on it – youngest son's glass has two blue bands)
Use a Sharpie or other permanent marker to write initials on thicker rubber bands
Works well for me – and my youngest gets a kick out of having his own personalized glass ID band.
Maybe I need to patent this and start a new business :-).
Other Time and Money Saving Ideas Can Be Found here:
- Saving Time in the Kitchen with Measuring Tools
- Save Time and Money Cooking Pasta
- The Easiest Way to Peel Garlic
How about you? Do you have a simple kitchen organization tip to share?
I do exactly the same thing! I’m a bit of a hoarder, so I keep every rubber band that comes into our house 🙈 I just put them in the dishwasher to wash them, in the cutlery basket (this probably wouldn’t work if the holes in your cutlery basket are particularly large, but it works well for us). Personally many of my elastic bands have come from foods (e.g. bunched herbs).
We don’t bother sticking to the same colour combination every time, we just try to remember what bands we put on that time, although we all have our favourite colours we tend to gravitate to! Having said that, I’m now thinking maybe we should stick to certain colours as we do still sometimes get mixed up.
Hi there. LOL on keeping just about every rubber band that comes in the house. Eventually they disintegrate and we just MUST toss them. Yes, the color thing does help! Our oldest still uses a band because although he’s recovered from a number of his life threatening food allergies (which was literally a miracle), he still has some and this helps him alleviate some stressors. You can read a bit about our recovery story here and subscribe to updates if you’d like. Take care and thanks for reading!
This is great! We use silicone bracelets found on Amazon that come in about a million different colors! Perfect for our family of seven and guests.
Nice!! I think I’ve seen those as well. Gosh I need to update this post :).
If you want to get some rubber bands, ask your mail carrier. Chances are they have extra rubber bands in their mail bag, because the mail is always banded out in loops that way. Just a suggestion.
Great tip!
HI Last year my daughter suggested everyone having a few mugs each. One goes in the cabinet and the other hangs from a cup hook screwed in the bottom of an upper cabinet. They are in order by age. Works well. Still have the issue with glasses. I would be afraid that the rubber bands would become weak, break, and get down in the dishwasher bottom or work their way into the mechanicals. Just a thought.
We remove the rubber bands when putting them in the dishwasher. We haven’t had any break off when we’ve forgotten, but yes they do get weak. Thanks for reading!
Hi
That is a good idea identifying different glasses for different people but as a germ freak using rubber bands and leaving them on permanently seems very unhygienic. Think of all the germs lurking under the bands. Ugh.
Why not just buy each person a couple of their own particular shaped/coloured or patterned glasses? Keep the spares where no one else will use them and only get them out when a glass gets broken. Much cleaner and healthier in my view.
Hi there. We actually remove the bands when washing in the dishwasher, etc but good point. I think what you mention is a good idea but not as helpful when one person drinks more than the others–which happens here often. Anyhow thanks! Sorry this took so long to respond to—I was ill thru 9/19 and finally got better but had a lot of catching up to do!