This is an issue that I have ,too. I keep my glass with me throughout the house, if I am cleaning, and stuff. I put it in the DW at some point, then later start a new one. DH leavEs his on the counter, right by the faucet, as he has been taught by his mother. His mother carries hers to her room, where she spends most of her time. She uses it until something starts to grow in it, which is disgusting to me. I run the DW almost every night, and it is rarely packed enough that I could not wash 3 or 4 more glasses, so it doesn't seem like saving water, or energy, or whatever to leave the glasses sitting around.

Way too much info, I know, but hth...

Nancy

Where do you put the glasses that you use to drink water?

The counter, silly! ;)

Are you in the planning stages of getting marble (I ask because I haven't been around much lately)? Water doesn't usually leave rings from cups unless it is hard. Also, after a while, you'll just realize that rings are rings on marble and let it go. Or not. I personally don't worry about rings, but I do not have children and we don't drink juices (wait, wine is a juice!) or milk and such and those would be a thought-changer for me probably.

To answer the question, we leave cups on the counters :)

We drink our water and put the cup in the fridge.

I make up a 1/2 gallon of gator aide each AM and it is in the fridge. I have a 1 qt plastic freezer container that I use as my "glass". I just fill it throughout the day until the pitcher is empty. I learned this from my chef son...they each have one in the restaurant and use these containers as they have lids. Brilliant..since the health dept requires no open containers out and also they can write their name on the container with a marker. So this is what you should do too. No breakage and you can write the name on the outside.

Also one tip...you don't really get the benefit from drinking plain water that you think you do. If you don't have electrolytes in the fluid you drink then it doesn't go to the "right" side of the cells and you don't get the "use" of the fluid. I can do a real electrolyte lecture but suffice it to say that you need to be drinking Gator aide or other electrolyte substance not just plain water . Hope this helps with your increased fluid intake and the clutter on the counters .c

If there are a couple of us at my dad's house we put them in the fridge. If there are a lot of people there I put mine in my bedroom. The younger (all adults now but barely) still plow through every glass in the house.

At my house I drink green tea right out of the jug all day, if I am home and SO keeps a glass to the right of the sink all day.

I bought stainless steel reusable water bottles in bulk at Christmas this past year, and I drink water from them, not a glass. The bottles have a top, and I can be a klutz, so that keeps spills to a minimum. If I'm home, I'll pull one out and drink from it until it loses it's cool, and then it'll get refilled with cold water, redux. (I have a filter pitcher and a water dispenser in the fridge.) For work, I refill the bottle from the water fountain. At the end of the day, the bottle and the top go in the DW. I will occasionally get out the bottle brush and go through the whole dozen, just in case the DW doesn't reach down deep enough, but that's probably overkill.

You could do the same thing with different colored bottles for every family member.

We often leave them (for a meal or three) at our "places" at the table.

You could get your kids each two glasses with their names or initials on them and say that they get one for the day. Put all the other glasses out of reach. Make them drink out of their hand if they violate the system.

Good idea with the labeling. That's what came to my mind.
It would be an opportunity to teach them how to rinse them out, too, given how gross milk cups can become.

I'm alone, so mine go right into the dishwasher. If I've had the energy to empty it, that is. I run it about 1ce a month -- quite a difference from a family of 4!

We are towards the end of our remodel, but as soon as I can catch my breath, I'm going to make myself one of these:

(the image is linked to the blog post)

Since I've been without a dishwasher, I've cracked down on the number of cups used in a day, but there are still too many.

I am in love with my Contigo bottles. Because they are pretty spill proof I tend to have them with me all the time, and I've found that the secret to drinking more water is to have it sitting there. If its at my desk while I'm working all 32 oz are gone before I know it.

Hopefully the family would be more likely to re-use if they had a bottle...

I drink a lot of water, so I do keep a single glass (usually a biggie -- what I call a Texas sized iced tea glass, maybe a quart) going all day. Mine may sit on the counter when I am running around or working, but when empty or resting, it usually sits by the sink -- right on the marble counter.

That's an unusual vein pattern in that marble. Reminds me of the bargello needlepoint my mom used to do. Keep in mind that on counters, you will only get a part of that pattern, so it will not seem as busy as the slab does. If you plan to put it on an island, you will get more of the larger pattern. Either way, enjoy it, drink your water and don't worry about it. Or don't get the marble. I love my marble, but I would not want it if I was going to worry about it all the time.

I had to smile at this question because it's so typical of me. I have a ceramic cup that sits on the sink, and I use that to drink water from, take meds with, ect. Do I wash it every day? Nooooo. Should I? Probably. Not to mention that I have hard well water, so it eventually turns orange and practically impossible to wash clean when I finally get around to it. Or the occasional lipstick stain(!) When it gets too far gone I pitch it.

Now I'm thinking the water bottle idea is a good one. I have a stainless steel one with a stopper that hangs in the pantry. Hmmmm. But I'll probably stick with that silly cup.

This is a great question. We have always struggled with this. Right now I have no dw so mostly using disposable.

Magdiego, thanks for posting that photo. What a great idea. Thinking of making 2 of them. One for DH and I and one for the kids (2).

We each have a few Nalgene bottles around the house. One by each side of the bed, and usually one or two in the main part of the house. We each take one with us to work. It allows us to fill the bottle with some ice and water and have it nearby anywhere in the house (or outside of the house). Except the ones beside our bed, they don't really have a specific home, but they're often on the coffee table or kitchen countertop.

I flip-flop between my favorite cup and a water bottle. If it's the cup's turn, I put it on the window sill. If it is the bottle's turn, which is a day with errands so the bottle goes with me, it is anywhere since I don't worry about it spilling.

I was thinking along the lines of what magdiego posted. You could just put any four coasters down and it would work.

Like Green, we use stainless steel water bottles and refill. Well everyone except DH who leaves glasses everywhere :).

What Magdiego wants - that coaster thing would work very well.

There is no reason to not re-use a water glass ... give each person a specific color or write their initials on the glass with a marker and tell them to re-use it.

Ever see the movie "Signs"? That's what my house looked like this past summer. (In the movie, there's a little girl who leaves partially full water glasses all over the house.) Now all but 3 of us have left for school. DD and I carry our water bottles with us wherever we go, and DH has learned to look for his old glass before starting a new one, so he usually keeps his current one at the table. The water bottles get into the dishwasher every few days (or weeks...), the glasses do every night.

We have wonderful well water and are very seldom active enough to upset our electrolyte balance, nothing a sports drink from the fridge can't handle, so our water comes right out of our faucet.

I'm afraid I have no special system but just use unobtrusive clear-glass glasses that either get set quietly by the side of the sink or carried with us. I put them in the dishwasher instead of the counter above and grab another whenever it suits me.

A past kitchen had a 36" walled-in counter facing what was otherwise the end of an open L counter (a mini 36" "hall" on the side of an open room). The wall that hid it from rest of the area made that a perfect place for hiding the MW and coffeemaker. I really liked this little feature. Every kitchen should have a "hidden" place, and if I were concerned about hiding glasses, I'd like a setup like that. Also, many kitchens have the sink near the end of a counter, and a semi-hidden 6 inches or so at the end of the counter but still near the sink could be created for this sort of thing.

Magdiego- that's great! Thanks for posting that pic.

I love my contigo travel mug for coffee and Tervis cups for water. The Tervis cups claim not to sweat, but mine do. I'm pretty rough on them (well, the kids are) so I can't really say what the issue is. Overall, though, I love them. It took me about a year to finally try our my first set I was gifted, but now that's about all I use. With the lids, I can take it in the car or in the stroller. Tervis cups are American made too. :)

My drinking glasses are on my desk (I work from home) or in the sink when I'm done.

My "drunk" glasses often end up where I got drunk!

Maybe because we don't have kids, this just isn't a big deal in the scheme of things.

Phoenix is really dry and dehydration is an actual health risk so we drink a ton of water all day long and we just have glasses everywhere :) I gather them all up and stick them in the DW constantly.

When my DH was growing up each family member had a color (for all things) and they had large plastic water glasses in those colors on the counter so they could keep track. I like drinking out of glass so that doesn't work for us. I use lidded straw cups with my kid and he gets regular cups at meal-time.

TMI: DH and I don't worry about sharing glasses. We share way too many cooties as it is to worry about drinking glasses. I know, we are gross :)

I see lot's of cute pins on Pinterest that involve using chalkboard paint on glass, that would be a cute way to label/differentiate glass glasses...

No need to drink Gatorade all day long, it's full of sugar. You do not need to replenish electrolytes unless you are an athlete or working for hours in the hot sun or are at risk for dehydration due to illness (like kids needing pedialyte) I have spent my lifetime in dry 115+ degree summers in addition to working out for up to 2 hours at a time and I have never needed electrolytes to hydrate. That is really just marketing hype. Now, healthy people should not be avoiding salt either, but that is a whole different subject :)

Here is a link that might be useful: chalkboard paint glasses

My brother (6 kids) is installing a drinking fountain to eliminate the cup clutter.

Oh my god if you could solve this problem you could probably solve world peace too!

I use one glass all day long that I keep filled and with me. Do you think anyone else can do the same? Of course not. DH is the worst offender, he goes through like 6 different coffee cups every single day, sometimes two at a time (filling a new cup while forgetting he has one already on the go someplace). Drives me wild inside.

But over the years I've just learned to live with it and not complain outwardly, otherwise I'd be a non-stop nag. :) I tried so hard to get him to use his same cup and glass in our first years together; he'd always go "oh, okay no problem" and then do the exact same thing the next day. Ay yi yi. But that's my DH only ... hopefully you have a more "trainable" family, lol.

I use the largest Tervis size cup for my water and iced tea. The Tervis cups are great because they do not sweat, and they keep drinks cold. I get it out in the morning, and refill it throughout the day. At night it goes to my bedside table.

I put it in the DW the next morning and start all over again. DH does the same thing.

Kids have those colored plastic cups from Ikea. They remember their color for the day and just reuse them. I put them in the fridge while they are at school. Kids
only drink milk and water-no juice.

THey have water bottles that they bring to school, but these bug me more than the glasses because you can't throw them in DW. So they sit by the side of the sink until I get around to washing them.

My parents go through a billion cups a day and it drives me bananas when they visit.

I think people missed the question. This is asking how to organize the many glasses that end up sitting the counter.

I'd love to see a wall shelf.