Go-mugs, water bottles and blender pieces, Oh My!

(We attended my niece’s elementary school’s presentation of The Wizard of Oz over the weekend, and the title just came to me!)

I have presented hundreds of times to thousands of people in my time as a professional organizer. I know what jokes will work or not. And I can bring up common hot-spots and know which hot-spot mention will elicit a groan or exclamation.

Enter… go-mugs and water bottles, and to a lesser extent, blender bits and pieces. At a presentation last month to parents of high schoolers, the mention of go-mugs and water bottles sparked a lively discourse – “Some are so old the writing is all washed off!” or “That one leaks but it’s still here!” or “We don’t even know who that one belongs to or where it came from!”!

Organizing these items is another small but mighty project with a potentially big impact!

How To:

• First, we open all the cabinets and drawers and pull out ALL THE PIECES! Bases, lids, accessories, sleeves, hooks, rubber gaskets, etc. Oi, all the pieces!
  • And since these are all portable beverage carriers, we also need to check in the cars, cupholders and under the seats. We need to look in all the backpacks, briefcases and sports bags by the door, too. Collect all the extras from EVERYWHERE and give them a good wash.
  • Next, we pair up all the pieces. Top with bottoms, rubber gaskets with lids, straws with squeezy bottles if you use those (we don’t), etc. Since we’re talking about blender / smoothie cup pieces too, we match up the cups that go with certain blender bases, as well.
    
    
    
• Once we have the pieces all paired up, line them up on the counter (gulp). Yes, all of them.
  • Take a deep breath. Look at all of them. There are probably some that need to go.
  • Part with the easy ones – the unpaired bottoms or tops, the leaky ones, the childish ones and your youngest is now a teenager.
  • You can also send the ones that don’t belong to you back to their owners!
  • Decide how many is enough and how many are too many. I know this may be tough, but you can try these strategies:
    • Sort them by owner – I am the coffee drinker, so the portable coffee mugs might go in the Colleen pile;
    • As another example, each of us has our own Swell bottles, so I might put each of those in each person’s pile.
    • Utilize what I refer to in my presentations as Mug Math. Ask Yourself:
      • How many people in my house drink coffee? (1)
      • How many cups a day? (2) and
      • How often do we run the dishwasher? (Every day / every other day)
      • So, in theory, I need 4 mugs. OF course I have more than 4 mugs. But do I need 40? No. Same goes for go mugs / water bottles, etc.
        
        
        
• After you have decided which items to keep, let’s think about how and where to keep them.
  • Hopefully the pile has gotten smaller by this point.
  • Next, we need to chose one and only one place in the kitchen for these items to live.
  • If you use these items often, choose a home near the sink for easy cleaning and filling. If you use them less often, choose a location a little farther away from the sink, as that space is always in high demand.
  • As you choose a home, remember you can adjust your cabinet shelves to accommodate tall items.
  • AND… next time you are offered a promotional water bottle at an event, Just Say No!
    
    
    
• The Keys to Success for go-mugs, water bottles and blender / smoothie parts are: 1. A Consistent Home; and 2. Containers!
  • When we’ve looked at these clutter hot-spots these last few weeks, we know that we want a HOME for our stuff so we can find the stuff again.
  • Having a consistent home for our go-mugs, water bottles and blender / smoothie parts means we will find those items again! If we find a top or a bottom without its match, that’s ok. If we put all the part in the HOME, we can pair them up again. And a home keeps these items from floating around in other spaces in our kitchen, getting in the way in those other spaces.
  • We use containers like these shown, available on Amazon.com or at your local retailer. The containers corral the bits and pieces like lids and bottoms, but they also establish a limit for how many things we have / need!
    
    
    
    

Try your hand at this mini-project this week and reclaim your kitchen and storage spaces!