What will life be like for carafes after single-serve coffee makers?
I love my Keurig single cup coffee maker. It’s great for making a quick cup of coffee before I catch the bus in the morning and is also great when I’m entertaining and everyone wants a different brew of coffee with dessert. The Keurig has left me with just one challenge: what should I do with my poor drip-coffee-maker carafe?
So, I jotted down a list of a few ways to use my ex-coffee carafe constructively. After all, I probably won’t be using it for pouring coffee anytime soon!
- Water Plants – I’m too cheap to buy an actual watering can, so I usually end up dumping water all over my coffee table and kitchen counter when I try to water my plants with a drinking glass. Turns out, my poor abandoned coffee carafe works really well for this surprisingly tricky task.
- Refill the Fish Tank – It’s not so much of an issue now that humid summer is arriving, but during the winter my fish tank loses water to the air on a daily basis. A quick refill from my sink to the coffee carafe to the tank keeps my fishies happy and tank looking clean.
- Orange Juice Pitcher – Don’t laugh! It works really well. I had an actual pitcher, but recently dropped it. I actually went out and bought another coffee carafe at Goodwill because they’re great for mixing and storing frozen concentrate juices in.
- As a Measuring Cup – I don’t think this is true of all traditional glass carafes, but mine has 1-cup, 2-cup, etc marks on the side so it’s easy to measure water into your drip-coffee-maker. Carafes can easily be repurposed as glass measuring cups.
- For Coffee (but with a twist!) – Occasionally, I’ve wanted to make more than one cup of coffee, but didn’t want to wait and wait for my drip-coffee-maker to gurgle and boil and hiss. I just put the carafe under my K-Cup brewer and make a few K-cups worth of coffee. It’s great for late nights when one cup just isn’t going to be enough.
Any other ideas? What will you use YOUR abandoned coffee carafe for?

Well, it has been about 5 years since we have made any major changes to the 
