When setting up a house for an adult couple, buying good drinking glasses isn’t difficult – we merely select an assortment of the types of glassware that meet our entertaining lifestyle and personal preferences. However, when little tykes enter the scene, it’s a whole new setting.
Selecting carefully to meet the demands and needs of the kids can go a long way to prevent spills and injuries from your everyday glassware.
Pick glassware styles that are easy to grip and drink from. Narrower drinking glasses are not really suitable for children. Grasping these uniformly-shaped models is more difficult for small hands. Drinking requires more patience and these taller glasses are more likely to be accidentally tipped over.
Be sure the design of the glass will provide a good grip for small hands. A glass with a heftier base will add stability and be less likely to be knocked over. Glasses with a pedestal base usually offer easier handling, but ensure the bowl part of the glass is not too large for small hands and that the base provides the required weight to counter-balance the glass.
Select a variety of sizes of glasses suited to your children’s different ages. This will require some more cabinet storage room, but it’s worth the lower spill rate. A small 4 ounce juice glass is more manageable for a three year old than an eight ounce partially filled glass. Remember that the size of the glass also adds weight to the content.
Glasses sporting an ‘unbreakable’ label are excellent value for your money and extremely durable for young children. However, these models can and do sometimes break, whether from the way they are dropped or the particular angle at which they meet a hard surface, and when they do, they usually shatter in a million pieces. But overall, they generally outlast the rest of the drinkware in the cabinet.
Acrylic glasses is still the best for children. Very economical, user friendly and of less concern should they get misplaced in the sandbox or the yard.
Choose glassware that is made of thicker glass for increased durability. This is most important for toddlers, as they tend to want to bite into the rim and could easily break into a thin glass and suffer injury. Thicker glasses usually have a longer lifespan and are much more durable when washed either in the dishwasher or by hand.
These guidelines will reduce danger and help increase the lifespan of your glasses investment. If you’ve noticed that your family’s glasses breakage rate has increased recently, it may be a good idea to review your current glasses and make changes where needed.
