What do you do with the dozens of mugs that you can't help collecting if you are a typical member of contemporary urban society?

If I plan on having a yard sale, I’ll put them out on a 25 cent table. Whatever doesn’t sell at my yard sales I almost always take to Good Will.

If there were no immediate plans for a yard sale, and I had quite the collection, I’d take them to Good Will anyway. If I only had one I wanted to get rid of, I’d probably chuck it. Bad, I know.

Take them to Good Will, where I can get them cheep (because klutzes need hot tea, too :)).

On my desk, one holds pens and pencils, another holds sharpies and felt tip markers and a third holds tools like a magnifying glass, ruler, scissors, etc.
I periodically leave them at Goodwill.
You have to separate them or they will reproduce unabated like Star Trek tribbles.

They are clogging up a cupboard in my kitchen. I also have some at work too.

They fill a cupboard in my kitchen and a few boxes in my basement and/or attic, where they are, indeed, breeding like Tribbles. Thanks for that, @worriedguy Then, when the design has completely worn off, I think so far that’s all I can do, think, about getting rid of them. Now that you’ve asked this Q, @Jeruba , my guilt at over-mugging has been renewed. Uh, thanks.

I wish I had a mug collection, I would keep and use them all for coffee and hot cocoa until the broke 1 by 1 due to my clumsiness. I don’t have a single gifted mug to speak for :(

I exchange them periodically at garage sales.

I have winnowed them down over the years to select faves and those with, yes, sentimental value.

We have an “anybody can use this” cupboard at one of my jobs. I took several of them there. Others have gone to Goodwill. I still have several on a top shelf of a kitchen cupboard. Maybe we need to have a Fluther mug exchange? Those of us with an abundance of mugs can share with those who would use them.

@tedibear I like that idea, a mug swap!

Maybe bring them to work and encourage co-workers to use the mugs for coffee instead of less eco-friendly disposables?

Funny question, but apropos.

I don’t drink coffee (at all) or hot tea (much) and I very seldom have soup in a mug (but I have a set of oversize mugs for that purpose if I do). So I also have a shelf full of accumulated mugs – that almost never get used.

I use one or two very infrequently for mixing ingredients for sauces or as temporary holders for ingredients that I’m going to use for cooking, but that still leaves – I’m guessing – about two dozen mugs that haven’t been moved from their places in over eight years now. But I hate to throw things out that aren’t broken, and I’m not the tag sale type, either. So I guess one of the kids will toss them someday (hopefully in another thirty years or more!) when I’m gone. Unless I really need the shelf space for something else. (Taking them to work is an idea I hadn’t considered. Some of them go in tomorrow.)

Anyone need a mug or two? Many of them are matched, and I guarantee that they’re all serviceable and presentable.

I do collect mugs with designs I like from Starbucks. So far I have just about a dozen mugs in the apartment. But if I have a lot that I don’t need anymore, I’ll offer them to friends or neighbors first before donating them.

What about gluing them together permanently to create a mixed media artwork of some sort?

Coincidentally, I just learned this on my 4” utility knife question.

@njnyjobs said; “I sharpen my knives with a dual grit sharpening stone and keep them in wooden blocks with the blade edge upright than being down. I also use a ceramic mug’s bottom to finish the sharpening. ”

MY daughter, complaining about my boring and tea-stained mug collection, bought me two beautiful ones last Christmas. We discovered, to our horror, that they get too hot to use in the microwave.

I will occasionally, leave an object that has some life left in it (but not in my life) on one of the many benches in town. Everything (even old eyeglass cases) disappears, I hope, to a new and loving home.

I just keep them. I always ending breaking things so I always have back-ups.

I used to take the ones that I didn’t particularly care for to work, so that people would stop using 10 styrofoam cups per day for their coffee. I told everyone they could adopt one as their own, or they could wash them out and leave them on the coffee cart for everybody to use. Their choice.

I don’t have any mugs, not a one. Thank goodness.

My fiancee has one his kids painted their names on, we allow it inside the house even as our toothbrush holder. For now.

I used to rummage them or donate them. Recently, I tossed a ton of mugs and glasses out. I’d had it with them cluttering my cabinet space.

@gailcalled,

> my boring and tea-stained mug collection

Can’t help with the boring part (though boring can be better than some of the alternatives I linked above), but as for tea-stained—here is what I do periodically: I line up the mugs and cups and pour a little shot of straight Clorox into the first one. Then I fill with hot soapy water. After a while I pour it all into the second one, and on down the line, making sure in each case to fill right to the brim.

Just a little soak in bleach gets rid of all those old stains.

Then I give each one a good, soapy scrub and rinse, and they’re all fresh and stainless again.

Let the neighbors borrow them, I can assure you, many of them you will never see again.

I have a shitload of mugs, indeed. More then I’ll ever need. I keep em, store away the excess usually, or they sit in the cupboard for eons. Then it bothers me so I store them away.

I’d give them away if people needed them, but nobody ever wants them.

Give them to missions or thrift stores.

I’m not sure if some of these are real answers or are meant as advice. Just to clarify, I am not asking “What should I do?” I’m asking “What is it that you actually do?” Some people did answer this question as aked; thank you.

@Jeruba oops

I came up with another idea! I have decided to take up candle making and I got myself a couple of cute latte mugs that will serve as decorative candle containers :) Like this

^I’ve done that too, @abysmalbeauty. Candles in teapots & gravy boats are quite cute, too. They make perfect hostess gifts.

@Jeruba I actually give them away unless I like them well enough to keep.

I had a friend years ago who had a cabin in the Adirondack woods. She poured cement and laid rustic paths made the with the irregular-shaped cement rounds. Into the wet cement, she embedded bits of broken bottles, glass and china. It was a very effective look.

I am about to put the odds and ends of my apple green ceramic tile used for my kitchen back to work.

I have a flagstone walk and over the year the stones have shifted, cracked and had pieces broken off. The green tile remnants look nice in the irregular shaped dirt patches between the flagstones and also keep the weeds down.

This is the
area, before I weeded it. (Milo is in his usual supervisory role.)

Another angle.

The other wonderful use for small ceramic, china or glass shards is to provide drainage under the soil in a flower pot. This presupposes that you are willing to smash your unbeloved old mugs. (Easy, however, if they are already cracked and chipped, as most of mine are.)