Hate is a strong word so I will refrain from using it; I am not a fan of sippy cups. They are clunky, they don’t stack together, you have to keep track of both the lid and cup and it’s a miracle if you find those at the same time! I get exasperated just thinking about it!
With a 2 and a 4 year old, I am on a countdown to sippy cup free days; but until that day I decided it was time to find a solution! So, since this is something in my home that I want to fix, but not something I want to spend a ton of time or energy on I decided that it is the perfect thing to focus on for today’s 10 minute Tuesday post. 10 minutes? I can do that!
Here are all the cups I pulled out of our cabinet in less than 10 minutes!
Where did all of these come from? Does this happen to anyone else? A collection of cups that seems to appear from who knows where? We don’t even go out to eat often enough to collect all of these!
Clutter Problem
An overflow of kids cups in our cabinet.
Solution
Purge unnecessary cups to streamline our cabinet.
Remember this is a 10 minute project so don’t start emptying all of your cabinets onto the counters. For now, we are just focusing on one cabinet. I saved organizing my pantry for another day when I have more time.
If you don’t have huge problems with cups, choose the cabinet that could benefit from just 10 minutes of clutter control.
Here is my cabinet after pulling out all the cup clutter.
You might be asking yourself, “Where are the cups my little 2 and 4 year olds are going to use?” I would like to take this opportunity to share my philosophy on sippy cups. (You didn’t know it needed its own philosophy did you?)
I already mentioned my disdain for these cups, but I should say that although I am not a fan of the sippy cup, I am even less of a fan of spilled drinks on the rug. After many trials with cheap sippy cups we found the old cliché to be true, “you get what you pay for” with sippy cups.
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| Nuby |
We splurged and brought 4 of these Contigo travel cups
. My girls were a good 2 years old before they were able to press the button to open the top. But once they could it was a perfect!
Now I have only 2 sets, one for the car, and one that stays on the table during the day and goes in their bed at night. Each set is only filled with water so there are no yucky surprises when we find a missing cup.
The sippy cups are washed out every couple of days or so and then I fill them right back up with water and put them where they go.No sippy cups allowed in cabinets! I really feel that when it comes to sippy cup land less really is more! Plus since the girls always know where the cups go they can easily find them on their own instead of them living in the cabinet out of reach.
Here’s a pic of my tidier cabinet. There are a few spots that are empty in this pic that are usually home for cups like my husband’s giant tumbler that goes on the top shelf and two small juice cups with handles for the girls (both in use when I took this picture).
We kept a few plastic larger mugs for travel since I’m buying more expensive metal cups is not on my must buy list at the moment. Now with the sippy cups gone, the things we kept have room and an actual home. No more sippy cups falling on the head when I go to reach for my mug!
As much as I love drastic before and after pictures, 10 minute Tuesday is focused on small change.
10 minutes of cabinet clean up or maintenance can go a long way to deter clutter from finding its way into your home and cabinets!
How do you control your multiplying sippy cups? or travel cups? Do you have your own philosophy when it comes to cups for your little one? Share your own 10 minute tackle!
I think I discovered and even easier sippy cup solution. (My boys are 16 and 20 so I discovered this back in the old days.) NO SIPPY CUPS! I experimented with all the fancy cups that came out in the 90's but soon thought to myself why do my children need to walk around the house with something to drink all the time. If they are thirsty they can sit at the table and drink from a regular cup. I used short heavy tumblers that are hard to tip over. Spills were always over the kitchen floor and no, my boys never broke a cup.
You are so right! If I could go back in time I would do it that way. For some reason you see other families with a bunch of sippy cups and you think you need a bunch too!