By a Dad Drowning In Hydration Vessels
One bottle.
Two bottles.
Three bottles.
Oh no… not more bottles.
I stare at the ever-growing mountain of water bottles in our home, baffled. How did this happen? Did they multiply? How?
We have stainless steel ones. Insulated ones. Ones with straws. Ones that look like they could survive re-entry from space. And yet, I swear we only have four family members. So why do we have roughly the same number of water bottles as a mid-sized CrossFit gym?
You know the names: Stanley. Yeti. Owala. Iron Flask. Nalgene. ThermoFlask. There are more. I wish I did not know that.
I sit and ponder my cornucopia of containers, and then… clarity. It all began innocently enough.
The kids got bigger. That apparently meant they “needed” bigger water bottles. Because obviously, their growth spurts demand hydration technology that NASA would envy. My wife comes home, eyes sparkling, holding a new water bottle like it’s the Holy Grail.
“Look at this one!” she beams.
“It looks like the other ones, do we really need that?” I say cautiously.
She gasps. “But this one… holds more water.”
And just like that—boom—12 bottles added to the collection.
But wait, there’s more.
Let’s not forget my wife’s personal hydration journey. She’s on a mission to find the perfect bottle, and I blame TJ Maxx. That place is the gateway bottle drug.
She’ll come home holding yet another new one:
“I had to get this! Look at the color.”
“This one keeps water super cold!”
“This one keeps it hot!”
“And this one? This one keeps it cold AND hot. At the same time. Maybe. I don’t know. But I needed it.”
And of course, the famous words, “I saved money by getting this one, it was on sale!”
Ohhhhh, now I get it. These bottles are more important than the children’s 529 college savings fund.
Do we actually use all these bottles? No. But we display them – in the cabinet, under the beds, and in the trunk of the car. Like hidden trophies of hydration.
So now, I’m just trying to stay sane—and hydrated—as I load 18 mismatched water bottles into the dishwasher every night like a hydration-themed Tetris puzzle.
At least we’ll never be thirsty… Or minimalists.