We have an awful lot of coffee mugs for a family with just two coffee drinkers. One way or another though they all get used.
Some of them are approaching 25 years old (my blue mug with the leaf pattern); others were purchased just last year when we were in Japan (the Starbucks Yokohama and Kyoto mugs). The Tokyo mugs are from Brett and my trip to Japan to meet our new grandson in 2011, and the Hawai’i mugs are from Christmas 2012, when we first came to Kaua’i and committed ourselves to moving here. The girls’ little mugs were stocking stuffers one year when they were small.
None of the mugs was particularly expensive; I think the most we’ve ever spent on one is $11.95 for one of the blue & white Starbucks architecture mugs, which celebrate our favorite west coast cities. We had collected five when Starbucks stopped making them, and had to bid for the last one on eBay. The other mugs were gifts, or picked up at a market or craft exhibit, or as an inexpensive souvenir on one of our or the girls’ travels. Each one holds much more than coffee though, and there isn’t a day that I don’t reflect on the time and place we purchased or received the mug I am drinking from that day.
Brett has a system for setting the mugs out every morning, so that every day of the week he and I each get a different one, with a different memory. Will we addd another one someday? I’ll never say never, although we’re getting very picky these days, needs versus wants and all that, and we really don’t have room for more. We’re very satisfied and happy with all we have now, but who knows?
The Occasional Nomads 