And I’m not sure I want to solve it.

I’ve written before about stuff; how much I have vs. how much I need to have. My house is very organized but it’s FULL, and no one wants any of this stuff when I die, so I need to get rid of it. I’m working on this attachment to material possessions problem, I really am.

But I can’t get over this coffee cup thing.

There is a two-door/three-shelf cabinet in my kitchen where, I suppose, a more NORMAL person would store her dishes. All of her dishes. In my house, all three shelves hold coffee cups.

The first shelf holds single mugs, many of them English. The English, with their love of tea, make a damn fine mug; lightweight, medium-sized, fired almost to a porcelain state, and capable of holding the hottest beverages. They also look adorable and quaint and jolly. I have English mugs that date back to the 1970s, and they last forever. People know this about English mugs. In fact, some of mine (the Hornsea mugs) are worth $50 a piece, according to Etsy and eBay. Which just gives me more of an excuse to hang on to more mugs than I can ever drink out of in my life.

I don’t use my Hornsea mugs. In fact, I have them stashed in another cabinet in the dining room so they don’t get chipped. But we’re not going to discuss those other mugs that have been deemed collectible. We’re just going to talk about the mugs in the kitchen cabinet.

Not all of the single mugs are English. One is a “Write like a m0therfucker” mug (some of you recognize that from Dear Sugar) that used to be my day job coffee mug. But at some point I carried coffee into a big meeting with our very conservative company president and realized I was drinking out of a mug that said “m0therfucker” on it, so I brought it home. It sits with others I’ve deemed sentimentally important. Mugs are emotional, I tell you. I made myself get rid of ten mugs earlier this year, just ten, mind you. I was restocking my father’s estate sale and I certainly had enough mugs to spare, but you’d have thought it was Sophie’s Choice there in the kitchen.

I still have too many mugs on this shelf.

Do any of you need any mugs?

Because above the shelf with all those single mugs, there are mugs in sets. I have three pairs of matched mugs, which seems very cozy but is silly because my husband is not a coffee drinker. When he drinks hot tea, he has his own mugs he brought into the marriage. I consider these mugs acceptable but not exceptional, and they sit on the first shelf with all of my superior mugs. I mean, he only has two mugs. Some people who live in my house are sane.

There’s a set of six Japanese stoneware mugs I break out for book group, because one of my book groups has a lot of tea drinkers. So apparently I think it’s nice for them to all be confused by which mug might be theirs.

Does anyone need a set of nice mid-century stoneware mugs?

I know a crazy lady who six to spare.

Next to the mug sets, there’s a special category of mugs that are gorgeous, gigantic, gleaming vessels of great beauty. These mugs are far too large for hot drinks. They are so large, your coffee is cold by the time you finish filling the thing. These mugs only work for drinking water all day at your desk.

My company makes them.

Every few years, I buy a new one at the employee store because it’s so damn beautiful, and it sits on my desk for water, until a new one comes out that is also so damn beautiful, and then the old mug joins its brethren in my kitchen cabinet. I sometimes find these at thrift stores and I can’t leave them languishing in their gigantic gorgeousness. So there is an actual half-a-shelf of these monstrous beauties in my cabinet.

Do any of you want one of these? They also work great for soup.

The top shelf in my coffee cup cabinet is hard to reach. One side of the shelf is mostly empty, except for two fine English porcelain tea mugs that are beautiful and useless, in that they get too hot to touch when they are full. One has a cat sitting in a rainbow garden, and one has inchworms inching greenly and cutely around the bottom. Both of these mugs are lovely and fine and utterly useless.

Do any of you want them? I need to get rid of them.

The other side of the cabinet has Christmas mugs. Yes, it does. No, I’m not kidding. There are maybe eight in there. I have no idea why, since they are only applicable for like three weeks per year. Some years, I forget to take them down, so they sit up there, unused, for two years.

No one can have any of my Christmas mugs.

I still scan the mug rack every time I go to a thrift store.

About once a month, I find a mug I can’t resist. It might be perfect for my sister, who doesn’t need any mugs, either. I also find mugs for my daughters, who don’t want or need any more mugs. I know this. They know this. But I say, “I found a mug you might like,” and they protest, they have enough mugs, and I nod, because they are absolutely right. And then I get it out and I see a familiar expression of appreciation and longing flit across their faces.

The mugs go home with them.

I’m going to tell you the worst part of this whole thing. I only drink coffee out of one mug, and one mug only. It’s handmade, from Orcas Island Pottery, one of the most magical places on that magical island. I paid quite a bit for this (worth every dollar) and consider it to be the One True Mug. And it’s the only one I ever use for my morning coffee.

I was thinking, could anyone care about this coffee cup problem of mine? And then, in a meeting at work, one of my coworkers brought up the box of mugs she has out in her garage, waiting for one of her cabinet mugs to break so she can call them into use. And my manager chimed in about her special mugs made by her artist friends, and how she is going to put up a shelf to display the most “important” of the mugs! So I realized that I am not alone! We are all weird about mugs!

Pssst. Wanna mug? I can make you a deal….

(P.S.)

I went looking for this blog post because I wanted to link to it from this other blog post, and I couldn’t find it. And I looked high, and I looked low, and I even emailed my friend who runs the blogging platform I use, because my blog post had up and disappeared, and he looked for it and he couldn’t find it either. But of course, I then remembered that I’d posted this on Medium, and not here on my blog, so I had to sheepishly apologize for wasting his time. He forgave me, and I decided to add this post to my blog so that I never lose it again.

Thanks, Bill.