31 Days of Decluttering - Day #8 - Travel Mugs and Water Bottles

Moving right along on this little exercise....  Day #8 focuses on travel mugs and water bottles.

Here's what my cupboard looked like before:

Who doesn't keep light bulbs and cat treats in with their coffee mugs?!  (Ha!)  As much as I'd like to blame hubs for this mess, I'm pretty sure I stuffed all that in there.  :(

Here's the action steps according to "From Overwhelmed to Organized":

• First gather all your travel mugs and / or water bottles in one place so you know how many you're dealing with.
• Toss any travel mugs or water bottles that leak or smell
• Determine how many travel mugs and water bottles you need for the number of people in your family, based on the activities you participate in, and how often you use them
• Keep in mind how often you clean travel mugs and water bottles when you calculate how many you need
• Consider how much space you have to store travel mugs and water bottles
• Based on your answers to these points, donate or give away travel mugs and water bottles until you are left with a number that fits your requirements (use the ideas below to help you)
• Give away or donate any travel mugs or water bottles you have not used in the last 6 months
• Purge duplicates (e.g. 4 of the same water bottle because 4 family members participated in the same charity race)
• Get rid of travel mugs or water bottles that are poor quality
• Keep travel mugs and water bottles that are favorites

I'm not a big collector of travel mugs (I only have a few) and I sold most of my random coffee cups at a garage sale two years ago, so I used this exercise as an excuse to clean out my entire cupboard where my cups are stored.  Here's the after shot:

Much more organized and no more light bulbs or cat treats in with the cups!  In the end, this was all that needed to be thrown away:

The cats are now batting around the cat treats that were in that container like little hockey pucks.  Not sure what the blue thing is or what the white thing went to.  The white coffee mug just won't come clean (and it's too small).  And the lid won't come off the silver shaker top, so in the trash it goes!  

All in all, this was a good exercise!  My kitchen cupboard is now much cleaner.  :)  

Next Up:  Day #9 - Night Table