Water, Water Everywhere {and an obscure movie reference}

We have plastic cups sitting everywhere in the kitchen. Half full of water. It's bad. Like, I'm waiting for aliens to land and someone to yell "Swing away" and start hitting the half-filled cups with a baseball bat kind of bad. (Points if you know what movie that's from.)

Also? It drives me nuts.

How hard can it be to use the same cup all day? Just one day. Not a month or a week. Just a single day. That's all I'm asking.

Apparently, it's really hard.

"Whose cup is this?"
"Not mine!"
"Not mine!"
"It has to be one of yours. Because it's not mine, and I'm pretty sure Oz can't reach the water dispenser."
*blank stares*

(And no, it didn't matter what the cups looked like - superheroes, pink, flowers, plain. DIDN'T MATTER.)

I couldn't handle it any more. So I decided to try a new thing. And it's actually working pretty well.

I bought some plain cork coasters at Walmart - they were around $4. Then, I traced a C and an H on the coasters and colored them in with Sharpies. Now, when the kids get a cup out, they're supposed to set it on their coaster after getting their drink. It keeps drippy cups off the counter, and it gives them a single place to put their cups.

I know I'm not the first person to use this little trick, but it's made a huge difference in the state of my kitchen and the number of cups sitting around the house. Now, if I could only manage to make it work in the kids' bathroom, too. We're still set up to fight aliens in there. But one day...one day.