Hey Family, Why Is It Impossible To Use Just ONE Freaking Water Glass?

Dear Family,

You know I love you all more than chocolate. I even love you more than coffee (although your voices do sound like a cat in heat before the caffeine kicks in — totally not your fault).

But for the love of all that is good and holy, people, why can you not just use one freaking water glass? By the end of every day, I swear we have three or four times as many dirty glasses as we have people in our house. It’s ridiculous.

I mean, I get it — or at least I got it in the beginning. It’s much easier to just grab a new glass each time you get thirsty than to track down the one you used in the previous hour. It’s hard to know whose glass is whose when most of them look the same and you can’t remember where you set yours. That made sense when we first started out on our water-consuming journey together.

But I’ve spent years — years, darlings — attempting to remedy all of those things. I’ve devised well-thought-out systems and given directions a trained monkey could follow to get you to use those systems to reduce our glass usage. Has it worked? Evidently not.

I don’t understand, lovelies. Is it that you are choosing not to be trained or that you are untrainable? It cannot be this hard.

We started off with the “designated place.” Everyone choose a place to keep your water glass, and when you’re done drinking, set the glass back down in that place. That way, you always know which glass is yours.

Admittedly, that plan was a bit naïve and idealistic. I can’t even get you to put wrappers in the garbage, which is literally the only place they should ever go. What made me think we’d be able to stick to a designated water-glass spot is beyond me.

Not one to give up after a first try, though, I then implemented the colored-rubber-band system. I thought it was brilliant. I placed a little bowl of rubber bands of various colors right beside the water dispenser — in plain sight. When you grab a glass in the morning for your first drink of water, you just have to choose a rubber band or two or six and put them around your glass.

Voila! Now you know which glass is yours for the day! Hallelujah!

Except it only worked for a few days. Then you kept forgetting. And the more I kept reminding, the more you kept forgetting. No matter how many times I explained The System, and the reason for The System, and the beauty and simplicity of The System, you kept ignoring The System. You’d forget to put your rubber bands on, or you’d forget which colors you chose, and our little family of five would still end up with a dozen and a half dirty water glasses at the end of the day.

Sometimes I think you must be conducting an experiment to see what it takes to drive Mommy completely insane.

But I’m a problem solver, folks. I thought, well, maybe we need something more personalized. So I came up with my most brilliant idea ever — beaded stretchy bracelets with your names on them. I took the time to make each one of you your own stretchy band, with your favorite colors even, and used letter beads to personalize them. I was sure I had done it! No one could get their glass mixed up with anyone else’s! It’s a system that can’t be thwarted!

Except you and your incomprehensible ability to thwart any and all systems of order and organization figured out a way. Didn’t ya, family? How do you lose a beaded band that has exactly one stated purpose? How do things like that just disappear from our home? In an ideal world, the band gets pulled out of the bowl, goes onto your water glass, gets taken off the water glass before the glass gets washed, and gets put back in the bowl. This should be so simple.

Yet here we are, still drowning in water glasses on the daily. I would consider having you all drink out of your own unique water bottles, but 1) I hate washing those things, and 2) you’re kind of talented at losing those too. I would just assign everyone a unique cup and hide all of the other glasses, but we have friends and family over all the time and they like to drink water too.

And is that really what we’ve come to? I mean, really? This is not that freaking hard, people. One glass per day. However you need to make it work, for the love, just do it. I’m all out of ideas here.

Love,

Your Brilliant But Exasperated Mom