We have a small mug and cup problem at our house, and judging by what I see at garage sales, Goodwills and inside other people's kitchen cabinets, we are not alone. I try to keep ten or so in rotation; the rest are in the garage, taking up about as much space as a car would, if we were to ever actually attempt to park a car in our garage. Why don't I just get rid of the excess? Why do I even need 10 when only two coffee drinkers reside here? I use the same Tord Boontje-for-Target cups every day because I think they're pretty and they fit nicely under the spout of my Nespresso. I have three of them; one broke and two more are stored in the garage. Also in the garage: all the boring white Villeroy and Boch cups from my ill-chosen wedding china. Cups with corporate logos from Lindsay's old jobs, my old jobs, friends' old jobs. Novelty cups, joke cups and cups with photos of children emblazoned on them, ours and other people's. (Nothing sadder than seeing that particular genre of mug at an estate sale. Who buys a mug with someone else's kid on it?) We all need to agree to just say no to giving each other cups henceforth, unless they are very beautiful and made in Scandinavia.
Before Tord Boontje did his Target thing (I don't think there was a better designer/Target collaboration), I regularly used this Maw cup, purchased, along with its Paw counterpart, at some estate sale shortly after I moved to Texas. The Snuffy Smith vibe spoke to me, fresh as I was from New Yawk City and carving out a new homestead—my little "country estate" in the exburbs. The problem with vintage cups (and glassware) is that you can't really put them in the dishwasher, and I'm not so country that I'm going to hand-wash my dishes if I don't have to. Plus, Lindsay started getting anxious about breaking his Paw cup, even though they're not valuable—you can easily score a pair on etsy for five or ten bucks. Quite replaceable, nevertheless they've been exiled to the china closet. At least they're not in the garage.
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