Travel Mugs, Thermosae, the Worst Way to Start a Day and How to Avoid It

I haul myself into work for 4am each morning. That's...early. Really early. Especially when sometimes my other job keeps me out until 10pm. Do the math, and be appalled.

And understand why I leave home every morning with a full travel mug of coffee.

I started using Sarah's travel mug a while back because the ones I own don't fit in cupholders. Not in my car, not in the forklifts at work, nowhere. I kept setting the mugs down in the car, and getting spills. I kept setting them down at work, and forgetting them (and burning about a half hour a day hunting for the mug...not good if you want to keep getting paid).

Sarah's worked great tho. Wide top, skinny bottom. Fit into cupholders, kept 20 oz's of coffee pretty warm. I approved.

But. And there's always a but.

The lid doesn't stay on very well. If you look at it the wrong way, the lid pops off. Couple it with a sort of inherent instability (like I said, skinny bottom-wide top) and you get coffee on the floor.

I work with my hands, which means the cup gets put down a lot. I'm not an idiot, I pick pretty stable, out of the way places to put my coffee down on. Usually. But sometimes you can't. Or sometimes, a forklift will crash into the table, and rattle it enough the unstable mug falls and the weak lid comes off.

No coffee left. Not even a drop. This usually happens after a single mouthful of coffee or less.

I'd like to say this happened once before I found a solution. It actually occured six or seven times over a four month period. Once it happened twice in the same week.

Not. Good. Mornings.

I still use the same mug, but now I brew extra coffee and put it in a thermos. The thermos stays in the breakroom, so that if someone wipes out my coffee I'm not deprived of my caffeine for the morning. It's also a nice bonus to be able to refill my coffee cup...some days you just need an extra fix.

Redundancy redundancy redundancy. Learn from NASA, kids.