# Did you have a family water glass by the kitchen sink when you were growing up?



## Ruth n Jersey (Jan 28, 2017)

Just this morning,I reached for a glass in my kitchen cabinet for a drink of water and it jarred my memory of back in the 50's when I grew up. The drinking glass always stood next to the kitchen sink. the whole family used it. You drank from it, rinsed it out and set it there for the next person. I remember my dad mixing some baking soda and water in it for heartburn as he called it. We had one in the bathroom as well. When I was very small my Uncle who lived down the street had a well. Hanging next to the pump was a long handled ladle, it was made of green tin. I think it was granite-ware. After he passed it use to hang by the faucet on the outside of my Grandfathers house. It was used by everyone for years. If you happen to get a bit thirsty while watering the garden you drank from the hose. Not suppose to do that now either, but I still do. Water tastes better that way.


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## SeaBreeze (Jan 28, 2017)

We never had a glass that we all used by the kitchen sink, except for one that might be in the drain board.  In the bathroom there was always one that we all used, my dad used to mix up some Alka Seltzer tablets sometimes in it, I think it was for heartburn too.


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## Aunt Bea (Jan 29, 2017)

We had one in the bathroom.

Outdoors is was drinking spring water with cupped hands or the hose.  Also used our thumbs to turn the hose into a sprayer, we never seemed to have a nozzle on the hose.  Nozzle is a funny word, do people still use nozzles?

While we are on the subject of glasses, water, etc...  My older sister refuses to drink water from the bathroom sink, she seems to think that the water from the kitchen sink has less germs or is cleaner, very strange to me.


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## Pappy (Jan 29, 2017)

When we first moved into the old homestead, we didn't have water to the house, with the exception to the kitchen hand pump. I don't remember drinking out of that pump, but outside, there was a hand pump with a dipper with a handle that everyone used. It hung on a hook and was all beat up, but I remember it to this day.


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## Falcon (Jan 29, 2017)

We never kept a glass by the kitchen sink for everybody's use. Everybody got a clean glass  from the cupboard.
Same way today. I keep a metal insulated thermos-type bottle  in the fridge  for myself.

No bathroom glass in the bathroom. After brushing my teeth, I use my cupped hands and water to rinse out my mouth.

I hate using a utensil that somebody else has been slobbering over.  I'd do without before using it.

All that was different when I was a kid.


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## Don M. (Jan 29, 2017)

Yup...had a "family" glass by the sink when I was growing up....and we still keep a glass on our sink for just the two of us...and wash it daily.  When we have visitors, we get them their own glasses.  When I'm working outdoors, I always drink from the well hydrant or garden hose...fresh from the well.  I take a sample of our well water to the state health department every two or three years, and the result is always the same...they wish their city water was as clean and healthy as our well water.  I have to run a water softener in the house, because the well water is so full of minerals that it tends to clog up the shower heads, and sink aerators.


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## RadishRose (Jan 29, 2017)

Just in the bathroom.

My son used to un-nerve me by sticking his head in the kitchen sink and drinking straight from the faucet! I wonder if he still does? I'll ask him over the weekend when they're here.


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## jujube (Jan 29, 2017)

Yep, had the family glass.....my mother would have been driven insane by having to wash the amount of glasses needed for everyone to get a fresh glass every time we got a drink.  Big family.    Of course, we kids used to drink directly from the kitchen faucet and that drove her crazy, too.  She'd yell, "USE A GLASS! YOU WEREN'T BORN IN A BARN!"


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## Grumpy Ol' Man (Jan 29, 2017)

Went to a one-room, country school my first three years.  There was a water pail in the coatroom with a dipper hanging on the wall.  All the kids used the same dipper and dipped drinking water from the same pail.  The water pump was a hand pump a few yards from the school house.  When the pail got near empty, someone would be sent out to refill the pail from the hand pump.

Part of growing up on the farm was helping neighbors bale hay and harvest grain.  A gallon glass jug was wrapped in wet burlap to keep it cool.  Everyone on the harvest crew or hay crew drank from the same one or two jugs.  Some chewed tobacco.  Some didn't.  Made no difference when it came to who used what jug.


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## Robusta (Jan 29, 2017)

We had no actual running water when I was real small. There was a pipe coming through the wall into the kitchen sink. Plumbed into a spring, ran ice cold 27/7.  I was probably eight when my father and uncle built a cistern and plumbed it in.  

We had a dipper, when we did get the new water, I don't remember any special arrangement for drinking.


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## Butterfly (Jan 29, 2017)

No.


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## dearimee (Feb 5, 2017)

When I was very small we lived in a log cabin that had no running water. We hauled it in a pail from the neighbors hand pump and drank from an aluminum dipper that was like a small pot with a long handle. After we built a new house my dad started drinking Pepsi and I never saw him drinking water so my sister and I grew up on a bottle of Pepsi at meals. Lol. Our well water was loaded with lime and though we got used to it I couldn't drink it today.


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## Mrs. Robinson (Feb 5, 2017)

Wow! That`s something I haven`t thought about in years! But yes,we did. I can even picture the glass. But honestly,most of the time us kids just cupped our hands and drank from the running faucet.


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## chic (Feb 6, 2017)

I don't remember a communal glass - anywhere. In the bathroom we had paper cups in the cupboard and if we needed to we'd use one of those.


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## Aunt Marg (May 1, 2020)

Ruth n Jersey said:


> Just this morning,I reached for a glass in my kitchen cabinet for a drink of water and it jarred my memory of back in the 50's when I grew up. The drinking glass always stood next to the kitchen sink. the whole family used it. You drank from it, rinsed it out and set it there for the next person. I remember my dad mixing some baking soda and water in it for heartburn as he called it. We had one in the bathroom as well. When I was very small my Uncle who lived down the street had a well. Hanging next to the pump was a long handled ladle, it was made of green tin. I think it was granite-ware. After he passed it use to hang by the faucet on the outside of my Grandfathers house. It was used by everyone for years. If you happen to get a bit thirsty while watering the garden you drank from the hose. Not suppose to do that now either, but I still do. Water tastes better that way.


George Harrison's song, All Those Years Ago, comes to mind thinking about this. 

Yes, to the glass sitting on the counter for all, and no, I had a hang-up over sharing anything as a kid, so bucked the system by fetching a fresh new glass every time I wanted a drink, even though mom used to get so angry. Lasted a few years and the glass on the counter stopped in our house.

When visiting grandparents, drinking water was fetched from the creek, brought inside the house and kept on the counter in the kitchen in the very same bucket it was fetched in, and beside the bucket sat a metal ladle that everyone used to have a drink with. I had a hang-up with that, too, and laugh like the dickens at how my grandparents would say to me, the ladle is clean, we just took it out of the drawer, you're the first person to use it. LOL! Can't believe I allowed them to sucker me in to believing their line of - _you know what_! 

What fun memories this conversation conjured up for me!


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## Em in Ohio (May 1, 2020)

We had a communal glass in the bathroom.  Found somebody's partial plate of teeth soaking in it one day.  Never used it again!


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## Aunt Marg (May 1, 2020)

Em in Ohio said:


> We had a communal glass in the bathroom.  Found somebody's partial plate of teeth soaking in it one day.  Never used it again!


OMG, that would have been the end for me, too!


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## ronaldj (May 1, 2020)

all the time.


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## Ken N Tx (May 1, 2020)

No...Dixie cups


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## C'est Moi (May 1, 2020)

No, we didn't have a glass to share in the kitchen or the bathroom.


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## Warrigal (May 1, 2020)

I don't think we did and the reason would be that we had no sink or plumbing in the kitchen. We would have gone into the adjacent laundry where there were taps over the tubs to get some water. As kids we would probably have cupped our hands as we did when we were playing outside.


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## chic (May 1, 2020)

No we didn't have a communal drinking glass. In the kitchen, the glass cupboard was to the right of the kitchen sink and in the bathroom we all used disposable cups.


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## Pink Biz (May 1, 2020)

*Not in the kitchen, but there was a glass in the bathroom which I didn't like to use. It was part of a wall attachment that held multiple toothbrushes.
*


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## Judycat (May 1, 2020)

We had the dipper hanging on the wall next to the sink. Above the washbasin.


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## Llynn (May 1, 2020)

Faucet on the back porch with a dipper hanging on the wall


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## terry123 (May 1, 2020)

No.  We had our own glass we used for that.  Paper cups in the bathroom.  Cannot believe people drink out of the same glass.


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## In The Sticks (May 2, 2020)

I always drank right out of the faucet, probably a gallon at a time.  I've always been a big water drinker...never really liked sodas.

Somewhere along the line I dropped the "right from the faucet" habit.  I keep a pitcher of it in my fridge.


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## JaniceM (May 2, 2020)

I don't recall a water glass in the kitchen.  But there was one on the bathroom sink-  and everybody in the family used it.


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## Aunt Marg (May 2, 2020)

JaniceM said:


> I don't recall a water glass in the kitchen.  But there was one on the bathroom sink-  and everybody in the family used it.


Knowing what we know now about airborne particulate and things, sure makes the old shared glass unappealing, doesn't it?


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## JaniceM (May 2, 2020)

Aunt Marg said:


> Knowing what we know now about airborne particulate and things, sure makes the old shared glass unappealing, doesn't it?



That's what I was going to say-  I guess they weren't germ-conscious!


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## Aunt Marg (May 2, 2020)

JaniceM said:


> That's what I was going to say-  I guess they weren't germ-conscious!


As the old saying goes, Janice, we've come a long way baby! LOL!


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## fuzzybuddy (May 2, 2020)

Yeah, now, that you mention it, we did have this one glass, sitting there foe everybody. Don't know when we switched to using a clean glass each time, but we did.


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## StarSong (May 2, 2020)

My father was a chemist who believed in science.  A communal glass?  No way, Jose.  

We had paper cups in the bathroom. Each kid had our own color of aluminum drinking glass in the kitchen. They were washed out every night and when we wanted water the next day, we took down our own glass and used it.
Well, that, or we drank from the hose!


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## Em in Ohio (May 3, 2020)

Pink Biz said:


> *Not in the kitchen, but there was a glass in the bathroom which I didn't like to use. It was part of a wall attachment that held multiple toothbrushes.
> View attachment 102276*


Talk about flash backs!  The one from early childhood was pink ceramic - if brushes weren't rinsed really well, there would always be foamy dried crud at the base where the bristles rested... ick.


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## Warrigal (May 3, 2020)

JaniceM said:


> That's what I was going to say-  I guess they weren't germ-conscious!


Herd immunity within the family?


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## StarSong (May 3, 2020)

Warrigal said:


> Herd immunity within the family?


Sure explains why in some households, every contaigious illness ripped through every family member.


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