Coffee Clutter

Aw hell.... it's a slow day. Let's talk about coffee clutter.

I read an article on unclutterer.com about coffee supplies and de-cluttering. So tell me, how do you handle the morning beverage system?

Here at the Homestead we have a drip coffee maker with a built in grinder. HOWEVER... the grinder is loud enough to wake up the small fry so we also have a little grinder (ShopKo special.... $8 on sale) and, believe it or not, it is often in the BATHROOM so we don't wake her up. So there's a special fun fact about me.... keeps coffee grinder in the bathroom.

I got a "french press in a cup" for Christmas. Love the coffee but am concerned because it is a plastic cup.... type 7 of course.

I buy coffee in the big bag of beans at Costco. I think the 3 pound bag is $9.99 so that's a heck of a lot cheaper than anyplace else I've found.

I'm going to make a confession here. I freeze coffee beans. Yes I do. About half the coffee will fit in our coffee bean container and the other half goes in the freezer.

Oops... another confession. I store the beans in a plastic container. Yes, me, believer in the repurposed glass container..... goes with the Rubbermaid option. I'm so sorry. It's a space issue.... the "garage" holds the breadmaker, toaster, coffee beans, coffee filters, butter dish, square (also plastic.... gasp) bread box & two lunch trays. So the coffee beans are stacked on top of the toaster and well, the three-year-old likes to get the toaster out to help make breakfast.... glass just wouldn't be a good option here. But I'm working on it.

Now where was I? Oh yes. The article talks about taking the number of coffee mugs from 20 down to 12. Now, in recent months, I've certainly been guilty of culling several coffee mugs... but is 12 enough? We have our morning coffee and our evening cocoa and our nighttime tea. I generally use the same 5 (ok, 4 now since I broke one) mugs. Hot Stuff has several mugs that are "his" and we have a set of 4 plain white coffee cups for dinner guests. I guess we still aren't up to twenty.

And now let's talk about travel mugs.... are those lids shape-shifters or what?? We keep ours in the bottom drawer. They double as child entertainment. We just stashed away (read: they will go to Good Sam's with the next load) a bunch of the big plastic insulated ones.... We each have two mugs that are our "favorites" and then Hot Stuff has a series of 3 plastic ones that he got from work.... he's fairly bad about leaving them in his car so we keep lots. And we have three "kid" mugs that are stainless steel insulated and work great for hot cocoa sippers for sledding in the driveway..... ok, yes, it was a set of 4 (and came with a matching thermos) but one of them got run over and I don't really want to talk about that anymore.

I own a milk frother. Unclutterer.com would call that a uni-tasker but I also use it to make whipped cream for cocoa so there. It cost a whopping $6 at Ross and I really love it. It is so simple. But it takes a boring coffee and makes it "special" for me and saves me the $$$ I could be spending at my local coffee hut.

What about you? Anything to share?