This morning, a careless swipe of the elbow sent my French press to the floor where it shattered into a million pieces. I’ve never taken any special care with it. When traveling in the RV, it just goes into the sink and rolls around in there.

One of the most common misconceptions about RV living is that it doesn’t allow for anything fragile. Well, I use fine china, ceramic, porcelain, and glass in my RV kitchen and I have never had anything break as a direct result of living and traveling in an RV. I don’t do anything special in storage either. My dishes get stacked in the cupboards just the way they did in my fixed home. I just don’t see a need to put padding between the pieces. The only concession I make for my mobile lifestyle is that I use shelf liner to keep the items from sliding around.

So, my French press was gone this morning and I hadn’t even had a cup of coffee yet. I let coffee brew in one cup, poured it carefully into another to leave as many grinds as possible behind, rinsed out the cup with the grinds, and then repeated the procedure thrice. It worked and the coffee was delicious, but that was tedious! Needless to say, a new French press was in order!

I had gotten my French press at the Winners in Thunder Bay back in the fall of ’08. Since then, I have casually looked at the selection of French presses available, thinking that I might want to upgrade to a bigger model since mine only makes a single mug of coffee. I’ve discovered that the small size is actually pretty rare. So when I went to Walmart this evening and saw that they had only the larger style (4 to 6 cups, which is actually two or maybe three mugs) and it was competitively priced at $20 I decided it wasn’t worth my effort to shop around. The bigger one isn’t going to be as easy to sneak into an overnight bag, but it’ll be nice to only have to heat water once on the weekend when I usually have two cups of coffee.

The loss of my little French press is irksome in that I had its use down to a science, knowing exactly how much coffee and water to add and how long to steep. I’m hoping that my proportions will stay the same and that the size of the vessel won’t matter for those days when I just want one cup.

I can’t wait to get back to my RV and its cushioned vinyl flooring!