AIBU to get rid of all our glasses?

[DoJo]

Well, I have just got rid of one, entirely accidentally when it jumped out of the cupboard at me and shattered into approximately a billion pieces all over the kitchen. I have had the dustpan and brush, hand held and large vacuum cleaners, cloths and a piece of bread out to pick up all the small pieces, but I am sure there must be some left as I just found a piece of another glass which was broken a couple of weeks ago lurking under the dishwasher.

I will now be paranoid about there being bits of glass all over the floor, but we are all (including 2 year old son) dirty hippies mostly barefoot when in the house, and it is unrealistic to expect any of us not to walk around in the kitchen without shoes on.

A couple years ago, a similar incident resulted in me getting a small shard of glass jammed into my foot which refused to be dislodged until it finally came out on a river of pus after about three weeks of throbbing pain every time I stood for more than about 8 seconds.

It has made me wonder why we bother with glasses - sure they feel more substantial and there is something a bit grim about plastic, but the trauma of having to track down every single sliver of broken glass whenever they fall over/into/out of something is so traumatic! Would IBU to smash all the delicate little fuckers in the bin and present everyone with brightly coloured plastic beverage receptacles from now on and for ever more?

And now every single shiny thing on the floor which could potentially be a piece of glass has to be forensically examined only to discover that 90% of them are tiny splashes of water/pieces of tinfoil/other mystery shiny substances until I get complacent in a few days and leave the one which will turn out to be the piece of glass that ends my life prematurely (or at least gives me an annoying cut on my foot!).

Yes. You would be unreasonable.

Could it be the case that the problem is the stone tiles in your kitchen, rather than the glass-ness of the glasses?

Drop anything onto ours from a height of more than an inch and it shatters into a million pieces (OK, maybe not a carrot or whatever).

YWNBU. DH and I have a plastic picnic wine glass each which we bought because we broke so many 'every day' wine glasses whilst washing up. They are actually quite nice.

You can get nice plastic tumblers too.

If you have dinner parties I would keep a set of glassware (at the very back of a cupboard) and switch the rest to good quality plastic.

I suppose I could retrieve all the alphabetical foam letter floor mats that we had for my son when he was younger and cover the kitchen floor in them, but I'm not sure if that would be worse than serving copious- drinks in plastic beakers. I'm not a savage - I would make sure they had suitably lurid designs on them and possible integral straws/glitter.

I have cushioned vinyl on my floor, and glasses still smash when knocked from top cupboard height or dropped (when full) from shoulder height.

I speak from experience here.

I also found spraying water/disinfectant onto the floor and going over it with a piece of kitchen towel helped get some of the small pieces up.

I got rid of my glasses and used bamboo ones for a long time . We went through a breakage phase . Then at christmas I was mortified when I came to dress the table !
Have gone back to glass now .
Am busy breaking le crueset mugs now instead ( at a tenner+ a pop).

I think YANBU as I've had 2 glasses 2 days in a row jump out of my hands this weekend and smash into a ridiculous amount of pieces on our tiled kitchen floor. We spend most of our time barefoot, have an almost crawling baby & pets who wouldn't appreciate glass in their feet so I think I might be joining you if one more glass gets smashed! Might get myself some brightly coloured plastic cups for everyday use but save a set of wine glasses for (very rare) special occasions (which no doubt will get smashed on the rate occasion they are used!) ggrrr!

I don't have children (just a cat!) but I did away with glasses a few years ago because I got fed up with them breaking in my hands every time I attempted to wash them up I was also aware like you of any shards of glass ending up in a place that could potentially harm someone. We bought some plastic tumblers similar to these and I prefer them to glass now

I still use plastic at home except for company. But if you can't find any plastic ones you like, perhaps glass in a contrasting colour to your floors? Tesco have some really vivid tumblers that always catch my eye in the shop-- maybe that way you could at least see any pieces left over after a breakage.

YANBU, though DP is "funny" about plastic (convinced it will poison us) so would never agree to it. He even gives toddler DS china plates & cups rather than plastic (with predictable breakage levels).

Though there's one thing worse than broken drinking glasses, and that's broken high-efficiency lightbulbs. Bloody things have mercury in and the cleanup advice has to be read to be believed.

It's not just glasses that can be a problem.

The lightbulb in the bathroom exploding and showering you, the floor, the towels and the bath mat with a million bits of glass isn't all that much fun either, especially when you're standing there dripping wet in the dark!

To compound the situation, Mr DoJo (in preparation for fish and chips I was forced to buy by another MNer) has spilled rock salt all over the floor, so there are a million more shiny crystals everywhere to be mistaken for glass, and if one of us does manage to cut ourselves, then the chances of literally rubbing salt into the wound immediately afterwards are fairly high! If we all make it through the night, I will be astonished...!

YWNBU. Sounds like a good idea.

I'll actually admit to not being allowed to touch glasses in my house. I don't use/wash/touch or buy them. I'm honestly useless and can break them in ways you'd never believe possible

May I add a further layer of horror to the problem of glass in the home? We were fast asleep in the middle of the night a while back and there was an enormous explosion, and DH and I were covered in millions of pieces of glass. The curved glass shower screen in our en suite bathroom had imploded (fault in the glass had chosen that moment to go). It took months to find all the pieces of glass in our bedroom and bathroom..

Eelseelseels
I've just had a new glass shower screen installed - and I shall now lie awake nervously awaiting the Big Bang....!!

This is terrifying - my husband literally finished installing a new shower cubicle in our en suite today! If I make it through the night, I will be astonished! Between the suicidal glasses, the potentially explosive light bulbs and now the possibility that my shower screen is secretly trying to kill me I think I will just flee the house and live somewhere padded.

Apparently, my astonishment will be two-fold if I am not killed by stray glass tonight - I obviously really mean it!

I was just about to say - shower screens. Tempered glass. I still have a scar from when one shattered fifteen years ago and a piece of glass embedded itself in my arm during clean-up. We were finding bits of glass in corners for months.

You can get very solid unbreakable plastic glasses that look like glass. They might be an idea?