Having cleaned out the mug cupboard, it felt like it was time to keep going with some decluttering and donating. I moved on down to the next cupboard – the cup cupboard.

Kitty supervisor was otherwise engaged and oddly chose not to wake up from her long sleep in front of the gas heater. It was a cold day so I understand, but I need to be supervised!

I took all the cups out and put them on the counter. Many of them are the IKEA Vaken which has been available in different colours (and names I think) over the years.

These cups above and below are from Costco – it was this set. My parents have the same set. The tall cups are favourites of The Other Half. To be specific, he loves the tall blue ones. He also has a tall blue acrylic cup not seen here and I have a matching pink one which can be seen in the overview shot above next to the purple travel coffee mug. He likes to use one cup a day. I’m more of a three cup a day person.

I like to use the small version of these cups when I visit my parents. At home I prefer the Vaken because they hold exactly 2 cups of liquid, it makes it easier to track my water intake.

These are the IKEA KALAS childrens cup. They are part of the Kalas range of childrens tableware. I have many MANY of the KALAS plates and bowls. These cups hold exactly 250mls so they are also great as a measuring cup. The whole range is microwave and dishwasher safe.

Here is the finished cupboard – much neater, and much easier to use. I’ve sorted it into sections, which will make life a lot easier for me. :)

Goodbye cups! Thank you for everything. :)

Continued from last week – we now have the mug keepers.

These mugs come from Haven & Space in Berry. They are not very expensive – I think I paid $3.95 for them. There are three different sets – the emus seen here are part of a “hearts” set, and the beetles are part of a “bugs” set. I believe we did once have the four heart mugs, however, daredevil adventures killed them, and we only have this one left.

These two sets have a small image on the inside of the mug.

Dragonflies and bees!

Beetles and butterflies!

Then we have the Geisha set. Some of these mugs met with daredevil adventures. I went back to Haven and Space hoping to replace them and sadly they were all gone.. some months later on another Berry visit, they were back and I managed to replace the missing ones. Plus I bought a set for my Mother, who also has some of the mugs from the bugs and hearts sets.

The two tall mugs on the outside were both Secret Santa gifts. They have gone a lot of places with me over the years, to several different work places. The stripey mug in the middle is my favourite cup of soup mug. I am not sure where the flower mug came from though I know it once had a partner. These are my sentimental keepers.

These were a gift, there were two more but they met an untimely daredevil adventure death.

These two were a gift, though I think there may have been 4 originally. They are a great size so they are definitely keepers.

These mugs are all from IKEA. They are the workhorse of our mug collection, and you can kind of tell on the TILLBAKA mugs at the top there, they are getting old. The bottom mugs are called the IKEA 365+ mug.

These are the non-mugs – lids from my Nutri Ninja live within them.

And now to mention my most favourite mug of all. Most mornings this is the mug I drink my coffee from, but we only have the one gorgeously huge IKEA mug – I used to have two of them but one got broken. In fact I can even tell you when I bought these because I posted about it on the blog.

It isn’t looking too bad for nearly 9 years of constant, regular use. All the other mugs are lesser mugs compared to that one mug. And every time we go to IKEA, I have this tiny bean of hope in my heart, that I might find another one. But I never have. :(

Laura over at The Occasional Nomads wrote a post about mugs the other day. It has inspired this mug post from me. It also inspired a winter-clean-out of the mug cupboard! As you can see above, we had more mugs than space.

The truth is, our coffee machine does not have a lot of height for mugs. All the tall mugs had been pushed to the back of the cupboard because they are too difficult to use. Supervisor Kitty appeared, as she always does when anything is happening in the kitchen –

Under her careful supervision, I pulled all the mugs out of the cupboard and now you can see why many were stacked on top of each other –

How did all of these mugs ever fit in that cupboard? I have no idea. When I pulled them all out, I realised that every mug has a story to go along with it – where it originally came from and memories from times they were used. Some of our mugs were gifts – some wanted, some most definitely not wanted. Some of our mugs were purchased in an attempt to find the perfect mug, but when it came to using them they did not live up to expectations.

The Other Half and I made some difficult decisions – to say goodbye to some much loved mugs and send them off to find homes where the owners might have a coffee machine with more height available, or maybe they drink instant and don’t have to worry about the height of their mugs.

The brown and white mugs were part of a dinner set but the handles are weird. Not a fan. The mint slice mugs were a Christmas gift. The cartoon cats were a gift from my Mother, but these are super tall and thin and do not hold a lot of coffee. The need more coffee set are very small – good for the afternoon coffee, but one of them is now chipped. The other four were an unwanted gift and they are too small.

Mugs are in constant danger in my kitchen. Life is a daredevil adventure for them! There is a reason many of my plates, cups and bowls are plastic.

These are some of the too tall mugs that I would have loved to keep but am letting go of. We simply do not use them. Here are the goodbye mug friends all packed and ready to go to their new home –

And here is the mug cupboard when the task was completed.

There was even space for the non-mugs to reside in their own area. Measuring jugs, plastic mugs which I usually use for making chicken stock or reheating soups..

Much better! I did keep some tall mugs which you can see at the back because I sometimes use them for tea plus they have sentimental value. This has actually turned into two posts – I will tell you about the keeper mug friends next week.