Tuesday, May 25, 2010

A Cup A Day Keeps The Dishes Away!

works for me wednesday at we are that family



I've learned a few things these last few weeks without a dishwasher. I never quite realized how many cups my kids went through until I had to painstakingly wash every.single.one. Even now that my dishwasher is fixed I feel like I need to reign in the cup situation since it's just out of control. I have 3 kids that eat 3 meals a day plus 2 snacks, all with drinks. Mr. Wright and I usually use 2-3 cups each a day also, adding up to a mind boggling 20ish cups PER DAY. I'm not a huge fan of doing dishes obviously, so if I let them stack up for 2 days then that's almost 40 FREAKING CUPS. And yes, we have that many cups. Sad, isn't it!?

A few weeks ago (in the middle of the dishwasher crisis) I was inspired my my friend who decided that every day each kid would get ONE cup. I had no choice but to apply it to our family too. I let the kids know that after each meal it was their responsibility to put it in the sink so I could rinse it out to reuse it later. We use plastic disposable 'party' cups so that I could clearly write their names so no one would be confused or passing blame. Every(ish) night I wash the cups just like real cups and put them back in the stack to get used again. I have about 3 cups for each kid since I suck at doing dishes (and sometimes enforcing the "put it in the sink" policy) but even then it cuts down on total cups.

Yes, I wish that we could be a normal family and reuse real cups, or I could keep up with that crazy amount of cups. Yes, I know that disposable cups are bad for the environment, but if I reuse them as long as they hold up I figure that it's better than running a full 'all cups' load of dishes every night. But for now this, and my sanity, Works For Me.

5 Thoughts From Others:

Julie Bagamary said...

Each of our 4 kids had their own color of Tupperware cups. They were responsible for it. It worked great for us.

Ally said...

Great idea! The sippy cups in my house get out of control!

Once my son is old enough to drink from a cup, we might use this idea!

Thanks for sharing!

Kim said...

We have always done that - any cup used by any of us is rinsed right away and set on the counter to reuse again that day.

Jennifer said...

We do the same thing but instead of disposables I just sharpied their initials on real plastic cups.

Heather Casey said...

We bought each person in our family a large stainless steel water bottle and we use them all day long. It's great! Not so many dishes AND i don't have to refill the kids' cups a million times a day. Yay!

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