please empty your brain below

I look at the stacks of mugs in my cupboard, piles of them, sitting on top of one another, and I say to the BF "We must do a mug audit someday." I point out the freebie mugs for films that I didn't particularly like, the ones that are faded from over washing, the ones that are now nearly twenty years old and you think "is that even hygenic?"

Then I just take down my Underground map mug that still has Aldwych on it and have a cup of tea.
I only have 4 plain white mugs and 1 large white mug for a friend who prefers their beverage larger. At work I have a 'Keep Calm and Drink Tea' mug which I use for coffee.
Oh! Great post, DG. Can be a sore point...

I abhor any 'novelty' mugs, though in our house I tolerate a few which live at the back of the cupboard, and a tall Donald Duck mug favoured by my partner for hot chocolate or builder's tea. And one black one with a discrete logo which is large enough for a decent mug of soup.

My partner's parents have ridiculously large collections spread across two houses, but only ever use the same two, re-used throughout the day for black coffee. One of them is crazed, chipped and coffee-stained but its user will not retire it. The two cool 'People will always need plates' mugs I bought them remain unused.

Plain white, all matching, for me please.
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch overwhelms the smart phone version of the site!
Guilty as charged. We have a shelf full, about 2'6" square. Then we carry on using the same four, one each for tea, one each for coffee. That way we know what we're drinking - not that they taste at all alike.
Mugs are esential social equipment at university but you just get fewer casual visitors in need of refreshment later. We still have my wife's university mug collection, and mine, and the ones added since. Being used all the time, mugs do break occasionally. But I expect some will be useful when the children leave home.

Some people collect mugs, of course.
I have an extensive collection of BBC branded mugs. If you ever want to drink out of a Points of View mug, "BBC Ouch that site for disabled people" mug, a BBCi mug or even a "BBC RAD" [Rapid application Development] mug, I'm your man.

But the biggest part of my cupboard goes, without fail, to pint glasses from beer festivals.
My favourite mug is a white pyrex one from Woolworths, circa 1980 (goodness, possibly earlier).
Originally I had one with a cartoon tiger facing down a rather un-PC little Indian man, but someone, somehow managed to break it after about thirty years of loyal service. Miraculously i found in a charity shop another one from the set, this one featuring an even more un-PC little African man, complete with spear, being intimidated by a green rhinocerous. I dare not take it to work.
I can't have a collection of mugs and then just use the same couple. That would be unfair on the rest. They'd feel left out. I have to rotate, and ensure that they all get their moment.

I'm taking pills for this, I promise.
I have my Chelsea FA Cup Winners mug from 1969-70, still in frontline service....
I can't believe you've bought all these. What a mug.
Amongst her collection, my mother has a Coronation Mug for the coronation of Edward VIII , which of course never took place.
And I thought it was just has me who has a cupboard full of mugs and uses just one or two!
Is it just the dodgy cheap monitor on this PC, or is that Metropolitan line mug entirely the wrong colour?
I have at least one mug made of recycled material, an "Ugly Mug" - on my desk and full of pencils (cf my hair style), a cupboard full of oversized latte mugs (free with coffee and animal products and never used), a cupboard full of 'best' mugs - from a dinner service (used at Xmas), odd 'hated' mugs (logos or feature mugs) that do service in the shed for holding things or cleaning paint brushes, mugs (chipped and 'mended') from 2nd dinner service...(want to throw it but it's too 'valuable')and then the 6 prong mug tree only 4 of its mugs get used daily. + 1, the mug that doesn't match anything else, is bigger than all the others and gets used fairly regularly because it doesn't drop off things, is sturdy, holds more liquid etc (which you know all about...)
My son bought me, as a Christmas present many years ago, a Homer Simpson mug. It's the shape of Homer's head, with a convenient slot at the bottom to hold two biscuits.

Naturally, I ate the biscuits.

But it's really impractical for daily use, needing to wash his face and all round his protruding nose - and inside that biscuit slot.

Consequently, it never gerts used.

But here's the rub. The chances of breaking a 'favourite' mug that gets used daily is much greater than one like Homer that never gets used. So the worldwide stock of unwanted mugs will never decline naturally, without human intervention.
Being a family on non-hot drink drinkers, we only have 6 mugs (one per person) for when someone feels the need for a hot chocolate or mug of soup.
I also have a golden jubilee mug for my old primary school and a couple of special Cornwall mugs all for display purposes!
Before our Big Move the only mugs we had was a Christmas one each, for chocolatey warming up during the snowy winters.
Thanks for the 'retro china' links -more to browse in spare moments. I have a huge collection of such stuff and if I had the sense to flog it, I could probably retire.

I was recently amazed to find that my ancient mug of choice had become 'vintage'.....
http://www.yayretro.co.uk/shop/12611/retro-cat-mug/
Thirteen mugs, one that I use daily and the others just stand there.

Just remembered, I've got one at my place of work too. Fourteen in all. All different.
I use
a) the Kitkat mug for hot chocolate,

b) the stoneware seal mug for measuring out exactly the right amount of porridge oats each morning

c) the (slightly chipped) blue Silver Jubilee mug given to every child in the village for cold compresses (cotton wool in iced water) - also used by son for chromatography.

Other mugs from an aesthetically pleasing but too extensive collection are used only when there are guests. But I do have loads of Fleur Hornsea Pottery - all seconds - bought with staff discount from a summer job in their now defunct Lancaster factory long, long ago
YOU HAVE THE METROPOLITAN MUG!

So, my best friend has the entire rest of that set, including the ELL. But not the Met. He never managed to get it. The contemporary LTM replacements (with a pic of a landmark on them) have a white inside and look a bit different. If you ever decide you'd like to replace the District and Met mugs, I'd happily give you a like-for-like replacement pair of the newer versions. That would basically make all his Christmasses come at once. And you'd get a nice new pair of mugs. Never seen one on ebay of that style.

I can't believe I'm offering a fellow blogger to replace his second-hand crockery, but there you go...
I have the Metropolitan mug, yes.

I got it when the London Transport Museum was running down stock in readiness for the new range. And sorry, but the newer range just doesn't cut it. It's a bit too arty, and just not chunky enough, so no deal. There are mugs and there are mugs.
No "Bow Bus Garage Centenary" or "Last Day of Routemasters on route 8" mug? For shame DG!

Like others I have a regular mug - one from New York with a transit token logo on it. There are others lurking in cupboards not getting used including (rail geek alert) Tramlink, RATP, Crossrail (from years ago) and Hong Kong MTR. There are also a couple of Worcester pottery mugs plus some 50s style coffee cups and saucers lurking somewhere too.
It's funny how you can have a cupboard full of unusual mugs, but when it comes to actual drinking, you stick to the same ones!
Our Life in Mugs-you've obviously hit a nerve here. I've got that Battersea mug and I don't use it as I find it a pain in the backside to clean (tea seems to stain it-you're right it's for coffee)

I was thinking the oldest one I had was my cartoon toucan that I bought in Germany 30 years ago when I was at Uni but kissenme's coment made me realise I had a Liz coronation mug that I got from an abandoned flat.

The last mug I broke was a Sparta Praha one which I got in Prague in 1989 :-(

Current daily use mug-Wacky Woolies from Ireland which holds a lot of tea (other hot beverages are available)
I have 4 mugs of note in my life, which are still in my possession.

A white Pyrex mug given to every child in our inner London primary school to commemorate the royal wedding in 1981. We were all taken outside and sat on chairs in the playground under the most ominous looking July thunderclouds and given these mugs filled to the brim with penny sweets and pencils/flags. One of my earliest/ abiding memories (I was only 4).

A white ceramic mug given to all the students at my secondary school to commemorate its silver jubilee (and next year will be its golden jubilee!).

A personalised mug with my (unusual) name spelt out in Celtic typography, given to me by my colleagues in my first proper job, because I'm so picky about what I drink my solitary daily cuppa tea out of – not used because I was worried the gilding will come off after repeated washing.

The mug I currently use at work, given to all employees by my previous employer as part of a welcome goodie bag when we were all brought together into one building by the river. It is white with coloured outlines of notable places of interest in the borough. Its distinctiveness means should it ever go walkabout it should be easy to shame people into returning it. It also marks me out as an ex-employee and I've had people visiting my current employers spot it and ask who it belongs to.

Too many words about mugs, so I shall end by saying at home I use a plain black mug.
We too have a vast number of mugs - it's a houseshare with four people, and I think each of us must have brought around a dozen!

I use two:
*MyCuppa Tea at work (helps when someone with a reputation for making undrinkably milky tea offers to make a round)
*Bright yellow Colman's Mustard at home.
Ho ho, this post hit a nerve. We are having major refurbishment work done at home shortly and so all cupboards are being cleared out. The cry keeps going up "Not another mug!" as we find more packed away in odd corners. My current work mug has Eeyore on (I have a reputation as the office pessimist) and at home one with teddy bears on and the slogan "Bear with me until teatime". My favourite mugs (now for display only, as they are chipped from use) are a pair of dark blue with "Arsenic" and "Cyanide" in fancy gilding: as an ex-research chemist they appeal to my somewhat warped sense of humour.
I'm not sure why, but tea never seems to taste the same out of a dark coloured mug. I assume its a problem to get the blend right against a dark background.










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