Is rinsing out your own cup clean enough for another drink?

[BamaTanya]

I'm trying to cut down on the sheer volume of dishes we wash.

 

Can one, theoretically, use the same cup all day for every drink he wants?

 

Must one wash the cup with soap and water if he decides to have juice or soda after having a cup of milk earlier, or is a swish under the sink good enough?

 

If one has a cup of coffee and decides to have another an hour or two later, is the rinsing necessary? Or must one wash to remove the coffee line?

 

Just wondering. We have a mixture of extremely sensitive souls in this house who believe everything they touch must be fresh from sanitizing and others who would eat from the garbage can. :tongue_smilie: And a few scattered somewhere along the continuum.

 

I'd like to set up a healthy household procedure that everyone understands for repeat uses of the same cup by an individual. Thanks!

 

I am actually fantasizing about the possibility of only have 7 dirty cups at the end of the day. Could it really happen?! :D

[Anne]

yes: one person - one cup - one day - no problem.

 

:D

 

Anne

[Classical Country Mama]

I can't speak to whether one "should" reuse a cup all day or not.

 

But reuse a cup all day is what we do, even my little guy who trots around the house clinging to his sippy cup all day. Assuming I can find it, I'll swish it out and put something else in it. Just seems silly to me to have to wash so many cups all the time.

 

(Of course, I also believe in the 5 second rule, so take it for what it's worth.)

[KristinaBreece]

My kiddos have one water bottle each. They use them during the day & I was them at night. For meals, they have one cup that Mom puts on the table when I'm setting their plates down. I wash them out between meals & they use the same one for each meal. (And between if they want an extra glass of milk or juice during the day.)

[Slartibartfast]

I have a "one cup a day!" rule. Whether or not that is always followed is another thing. :glare:

[Truscifi]

yes: one person - one cup - one day - no problem.

 

:D

 

Anne

 

:iagree: Of course, getting my boys to actually do it is another matter. It's a work in progress.

[thescrappyhomeschooler]

:iagree: Of course, getting my boys to actually do it is another matter. It's a work in progress.

 

Same here.

[tntgoodwin]

The only concern to me would be if you had milk sit in the cup for a few hours before you rinse it out.

[Classical Country Mama]

The only concern to me would be if you had milk sit in the cup for a few hours before you rinse it out.

 

In that case I usually rinse it twice, or make sure the next drink is something like bright red juice. :D

[DarlaS]

One water glass a day is enough. Theoretically anyway.

 

Even I don't follow the one cup a day rule, so would not expect my kids to either. I drink coffee from a mug, but would get something else for water. I don't think rinsing removes enough if the beverage contained fats (milk) or chunky stuff (orange juice, smoothies...).

 

We do try to keep it to a minimum though. It's not hard since we mostly drink water.

 

Oh, and with six of us, we simply must run the dishwasher twice a day or I end up washing a bunch of dishes by hand when I run out of room. That probably affects my opinion some. It's no big deal to end up with a few extra cups if I can just stick them in the dishwasher. (Just to clarify here, it's never full of cups. I cook two out of three meals and often bake something 2-3 days a week.)

ETA: We literally only have three kinds of cups in the house. Water glasses, coffee mugs and small juice glasses. That's it. (My youngest is a third grader.)

 

I'd go nuts if I had sippy cups & kid cups of assorted sizes added to the mix. I remember those days well. If you want to enforce some kind of rule in the throes of that kind of cup craziness, it would be totally understandable.

Edited September 19, 2011 by darlasowders

[Julie Smith]

With the exception of me drinking ice tea, usually the only drink is water. I'm not going to wash a emtpty cup of water to fill it up with more water.

[linguistmama]

We reuse all day, especially since we mostly drink water.

[twoxcell]

I reuse the same cup all day and just rinse between uses. Unless it looks really dirty or something, but I mostly just drink water anyways. Sometimes I even reuse a cup from the day before.;)

[Mommyof4ks]

We have one cup for water and juice, and we get different cups for milk. I don't want milk residue spoiling and the kids drinking out of the cup later.

[Denisemomof4]

I was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO used to running the dishwasher sometimes TWICE per day, and have it loaded with mainly glasses! I got SO tired of it!

 

We now have a one cup rule. The first cup you get out in the morning will be your cup for the day. We follow this rule unless someone is having milk. After milk the glass goes into the sink.

 

If someone is having tea, ONE mug. No more mugs that day. We don't have milk in our tea.

[Daisy]

yes: one person - one cup - one day - no problem.

 

:D

 

Anne

 

That's what we do. One cup all day. We all just drink water though.

[beaners]

My husband occasionally drinks coffee, but I'm usually the only one. I'll use the same mug for an entire day. I pour a little water in it first thing in the morning and take my vitamin, then add enough cream for my coffee. Any coffee I drink after that gets poured into the mug. Any coffee left in the mug from the morning may be microwaved as many times as it takes to be finished. I usually have a half full mug of coffee forgotten in the microwave.

 

I can stick to a single water glass all day if I'm the only adult in the house. If not, I usually dump everything into the sink and start with a fresh glass because I forget which one is mine. All the kids drink milk most of the time and juice occasionally. I will refill milk cups from the morning through dinner time, but they are promptly returned to the fridge. Sometimes I will tell the kids to finish the cup they have, but let me get them a clean one for the next drink.

 

I'm not fond of washing sippy cups and we don't have a dishwasher.

[KungFuPanda]

Just wash it. It takes 30 seconds. If you have one of those cup-washer-sponge-things where you put the detergent in the handle, it's more like 15 seconds. Everyone should wash their OWN cups.

 

I tend to reuse my water glass, but I wouldn't put anything in a milk cup without washing it first.

[Ellie]

You know, if you give each person his or her own cup, he or she should be able to decide for him- or herself whether rinsing it out is enough, or whether it needs soap and hot water.

[BamaTanya]

and sometimes repeat if I'm dragging or COLD later in the day and drink water the rest of the time.

 

I haven't been able to convince dh that water is a beverage, right by itself. :glare: So we have Coke and sweet tea and Gatorade and other sugary drinks in addition to chocolate milk . . . That are tempting to me and adding to my caloric intake . . .

 

I think it's basically a "switching to another beverage choice" problem that is keeping the kiddos from reusing cups. Maybe we need a "finish drink, rinse, replace on table" drill.

[TracyR]

yes, but we mostly drink water here.

If I drink milk I rinse it a few times or just get a new glass. Either way I haven't had an issue with that. If we used different glasses each time we drank something in our house I'd be doing dishes all day.

[MrsBasil]

I use 1-2 per day for me and DS. I'd think 1 would be fine.

 

I only drink water and occasionally juice or sprite. I use a big plastic glass for water and use that for a day or so. I have small glass glasses for juice or Sprite.

 

For my toddler I use 2 sippy cups per day. One for milk and one for water/juice. I could probably switch it to 1, but it's not a huge hassle.

 

I don't limit the amount of glasses DH can use, but I won't wash his coffee or tea glasses without him rinsing them. I can't take the smell, so they get placed in a corner until he comes home if he didn't do it before work.

[cjzimmer1]

Yep we are a 1 cup per person per day family. It hasn't killed us yet. However, everyone is offended at the idea of using someone else's cup so we have 2-4 (depending on the set because of course some have broken over time - we only use glass) cups of each "set" and each kid has their own set so everyone knows whose cup is whose.

 

I drink chai tea in milk throughout the day and even I use the same cup all day long without rinsing or washing. The only remnant is a dried on line and it doesn't bother me at all to reuse the cup that way since I'm the same person using it for the same thing. I will use a second cup if I'm drinking broth and tea in the same day but that's pretty rare. The kids have to rinse their cup if they don't want a ring line.

[Gailmegan]

We each use one cup a day. Heck, I even use the same cup for two days since all I drink is water. But if we have something really sticky that clings to the glass like V8 juice or smoothie with flax seeds, then we get a new one.

[Annie Laurie]

:iagree: Of course, getting my boys to actually do it is another matter. It's a work in progress.

 

Everyone in my family follows the 1 cup rule without a problem. Except for my teen, he thinks it's so gross to drink out of the same cup all day and gets out literally 6 or 7 cups each day. So he has to wash them.

[SKL]

Are you kidding? Sometimes I go for days using the same cup without washing. Cereal bowls too - I just rinse and put in the dish drainer, and use again later. The kids' plastic cups and dishes only get rinsed, unless they are greasy - they aren't dishwasher safe. I've been following this procedure for years, and we are all very healthy.

 

When I was a kid (growing up in a family of 8), we had 1 drinking cup in the bathroom. We all used it, for days on end, and it was rarely even rinsed between uses (granted, it was only for water). We all survived to adulthood.

[kitten18]

yes: one person - one cup - one day - no problem.

 

:D

 

Anne

:iagree:

[texasmama]

I would rinse everything with a quick swish under the faucet except for milk cups, which I would either wash more thoroughly or get a new one. It would not bother me at all to reuse a coffee cup which had been sitting on a counter for half a day. I also use the same water cup (with only water in it) all day. If I can find it again the next day, I will reuse it. It's just water.

[texasmama]

Everyone in my family follows the 1 cup rule without a problem. Except for my teen, he thinks it's so gross to drink out of the same cup all day and gets out literally 6 or 7 cups each day. So he has to wash them.

 

My teen uses more cups than everyone else combined. I swear.

[Carpe]

We have a one cold drink cup and one warm drink mug per person per day rule. We almost exclusively drink water and (unsweetened) herbal tea, so nothing bad happens to a cup if it sits empty for a couple hours before being rinsed.

[AngieW in Texas]

I use one cup for water all day and use another cup for my smoothie at night.

 

My dh uses one cup for water all day and another cup for his Mountain Dew.

 

My 15yo uses one cup for water all day and another cup for her smoothie at night.

 

My 13yo uses one cup for water all day. She gets a mug when she has hot chocolate, but it's been a while since she had hot chocolate.

 

My 15yo and 13yo both start off with juice in the morning and then rinse their cups and use them for water the rest of the day.

 

So all of us use 2 cups/day most days. All the cups are color coded so we can tell who the cups belong to.

[Maus]

I would rinse everything with a quick swish under the faucet except for milk cups, which I would either wash more thoroughly or get a new one. It would not bother me at all to reuse a coffee cup which had been sitting on a counter for half a day. I also use the same water cup (with only water in it) all day. If I can find it again the next day, I will reuse it. It's just water.

Same here, except we're not coffee drinkers, so I don't know what those cups are like. Baby's bottle often requires a little more cleaning, inside and out, because of the milk inside and the places she's left it behind (bathroom floor, etc.)

 

My MIL dishes out disposable cups at the beginning of every family gathering. You have to put your name on it with a marker, and that's your cup for the duration.

[Serenade]

In our house, we usually use one cup per day per person. Cups are usually rinsed between uses, not washed with soap. The user has to rinse his or her own cup.

[Julie Smith]

Slighty off topic, but I know at least one person who feels if you use a measuring cup to measure water. Nothing touching it except water and your hand on the handle - then you should wash said measuring cup. That I don't get. :confused:

[Laura Corin]

I use the same cup for my many cups of (decaff) tea over the course of a day. If I changed to a different drink I would use soap.

 

Laura

[6packofun]

I *aim* for this. LOL I've also banned my kids from using glasses (rather than plastic cups) because too many have been broken and we save them for company. :tongue_smilie:

[HLDoll]

We have a one cup a day rule. We all have large water bottles that we keep filled all day, and that's pretty much all we drink. The kids do sometimes have juice or milk for breakfast, but those cups get rinsed out in the sink when the table is cleared and they get set in the top rack of the dishwasher. If they want a non-water drink later in the day, they must use their same cup from breakfast. I usually drink a cup of coffee early in the morning before the kids get up. I rinse it out when I'm through, and if I want juice or tea when we all sit down to breakfast, I use that same coffee cup. We have everything color-coded as well. Each family member has a unique stainless steel water bottle and the kids drink from the same colored cup when they use the kids cups. When my husband and I drink out of glasses, we put different colored bands around them to distinguish them. It can be done! I suggest always rinsing the cup soon after the beverage is consumed and then setting the cup in a designated spot for reuse later.