Miles of Mugs

Have you ever noticed that the one thing that most kitchen cabinets have is an over abundance of mugs? They seem to propagate in the dark of the night or when no one is around. They continue to grow in number until there is no room left to stack them and you begin to look at giving them away or adding them to the collection for the next garage sale.

I have moved several times over the years and have had to leave stuff packed in storage in more than one place because of space and moving issues. Items were stored that were gifts or things that I had collected just because they appealed to me. A few months ago two storages were combined, moved and sorted. Dishes had somehow multiplied in storage!! In all due fairness, each time I have moved with little to nothing, people came bearing boxes of items - silverware, odd pots and pans, mismatched cups, plates, bowls and mugs.

Shortly after the last move - I got to return the favor - boxing up odd pots and pans, bowls, silverware, plates, cups, glasses and mugs - to give away. Tho the boxes went out, the pile in the cupboard seems somehow no less than when I started. I still have no idea what I am doing with all of those mismatched plates, bowls, cups, glasses and silverware of all sizes, shapes, colors and designs! And whatever you do - don't even look at the mug selection!

At one point along the way, I decided that mugs from places I visited were useful mementos. Fairly cheap, came well boxed and ready to travel and I always chose ones that I really liked. I gave some away as gifts because they seemed the perfect useful gift to give - fairly cheap and came well packaged to travel and send and served to say that I thought of folks while I was away.

I have my favorite mugs - a dark blue one from Roslyn, WA - from the gift shop that use to be the doctor's office during the filming of Northern Exposure and another from Depot Bay, Oregon. Three mugs from Scotland - gifts from Dad on his last trips over. A Glasgow Scotty mug from the last class reunion I attended. A kangaroo mug sent by one of my tour passengers from Australia and two McKinley Explorer mugs (those rail cars have been retired). There are a half dozen other mugs with less meaning - waiting for the next box to be packed for the next garage sale. There are a half dozen mismatched cups that rarely if ever get used.

Just for the heck of, I wanted to know what the selection was on the net. This morning, I decided to see what that consisted of, so I went on line. That was a mistake! I only looked at one site and there were several thousand designs listed! So with all of that, how does one go on line and make a selection? The one thing I noted on the site was that there is no separation of designs. Now some just don't flat appeal to me. Artwork and words that I could well do without - not that they wouldn't have some appeal to others. The site I was on had over 10,000 pages of mugs - on page 6,000, I found a mug with a pretty pink rose that really called to be in my cabinet.  No!  I did not look through 6,000 pages.  I noted the number of items at the top  of the page and just started typing in page numbers to see if I could find the end - I gave up at 12000.  So I asked myself the question - if I was set to sell these, would I not do better to have them in categories?  I mean really!  If I have no interest in skulls and bones and wild color splashes, and modern 'art', motorcycles, planes, dogs, cars, fleas, skateboards,  bugs, fish, comic figures, odd/off the wall statements and sayings, rough hand drawings, stick figures, photos of downtown small town Brazil or India and tons more, why would I stay on the site to find something that appealed to me?

And it wasn't just the designs - it was the different types and styles of mugs - tall mugs, short mugs, thin mugs, fat mugs. Mug handles are as varied as the designs - one of my odd mugs has a thin bird sculpture handle. If we took all of the mugs for sale - how far would they stretch? To the moon and back?

What if I can't find something that appeals to me? I can take my idea to any number of places and have it made to order. Do I really need another mug that badly? Let me go check the cupboard and see how many more have popped up since I checked last!

And just because I understand the marketing end of this business these days, I know that several ads to buy more will happily and automatically appear to entice you into the miles and miles of mugs available on and off line as soon as this hub is posted.

Mugging is hard work - think I'll go fix a cup - oops - mug of tea!