Alright, so let’s talk about bathroom cups. Sounds like a pretty straightforward thing, right? Well, let me tell you, in my house, it turned into a whole production, a real ongoing saga. I figured I’d share my little journey, or battle, with these things, ’cause maybe someone out there gets it.
We started off, like most folks I guess, with those regular plastic cups. You know the ones. Picked up a multipack, different colors, thought that’d be that. Wrong. So wrong. After about two days, every single one of them had that weird, slimy film on the bottom. And rinsing? Ha! My kids acted like rinsing a cup was some kind of ancient torture. They’d just leave ‘em there, often with a bit of water and who knows what else floating around. It was gross, plain and simple. I was constantly nagging, constantly washing these things. It was a chore I didn’t sign up for.
So, I thought, I’m smart, I’ll fix this. My next brilliant idea? Paper cups. Yeah, those little disposable ones. My thinking was: use it, toss it, no more slime, no more washing. Genius, right? For about a week, it felt like a win. Then, reality hit. The bathroom trash can started overflowing like a volcano, every single day. Seriously, it was a mountain of slightly-used paper cups. And the waste! It started to bother me, all that paper just going into the bin. Plus, believe it or not, they still managed to make a mess. Little puddles of water on the counter from soggy cup bottoms, or cups left half-full anyway. It was like they were actively trying to defeat me.
Okay, round three. My wife jumped in this time. “Let’s get everyone their own special cup!” she declared. “Something they like, maybe with their initial on it. They’ll take care of their own cup then!” So, we did. We went out, got a few different, slightly nicer cups – a ceramic one for her, a cool dinosaur one for my son, a sparkly one for my daughter. For a hot minute, it seemed to work. They were excited. Then, the novelty wore off. The cups still ended up… well, not sparkling clean. And then the arguments started. “He used my cup!” “No, that’s mine, yours is the other one!” Even with initials, somehow, confusion reigned. And guess who was still the primary cup-inspector and often, the cup-washer? Yep, yours truly.
I was about ready to just ban cups from the bathroom altogether. Just lean over the faucet like animals, I joked. (Mostly joked). It felt like such a dumb, tiny problem, but it was genuinely annoying. You’re trying to teach responsibility, cleanliness, and somehow bathroom cups become this daily point of friction.
So, where did we land after all this “practice” and experimentation? Well, it’s not super revolutionary, but it’s what works for us, for now. We went back to plastic, but with a twist. We got a set of really cheap, super basic, all-the-same-color plastic cups. Like, ridiculously cheap. And we got a lot of them. The new system is: use a cup, and if you can’t be bothered to give it a quick rinse and put it back neatly (which, let’s be honest, is most of the time for the kids), it goes into a specific little bin right next to the sink. Once a day, or whenever that bin gets full, I just grab them all, give ’em a quick scrub or chuck them in the dishwasher if it’s going on.
There’s no more “my cup” or “your cup.” No more guilt over paper waste. They’re just… cups. It’s not perfect. Sometimes the little bin overflows a bit before I get to it. But the constant nagging has gone down, the slimy counter cups are mostly a thing of the past, and honestly, my stress level over this one tiny thing has plummeted. Sometimes, the best practice is just finding the path of least resistance, you know? It’s not the elegant solution I once dreamed of, but hey, it keeps the peace. And that’s a win in my book.
