I'm tight with my family's money. I'm cheap when I need to be and strive to be a lot more frugal because I want to remain a stay-at-home mom. However, I love my coffee and tea. My husband and I love our Keurig but I don't love how much those little K Cups cost and I really enjoy drinking my own coffee. I'm lucky enough to have some great Kona coffee that my friends brought to me from back home in Hawaii. So what's a tight, cheap, and frugal woman to do? Reuse my KCups, that's what!
Since I first got my Keurig coffee brewer, I was on a mission to figure out how to enjoy it more cheaply. I started off by rinsing out the used coffee grounds, letting the filters dry, then refilling with my own coffee and covering the top with Glad Press N Seal or the My-Kap lid. The My-Kap leaked all over the place so that was disappointing but the Glad Press N Seal worked wonderfully until the filters finally failed. Now what? Figure out a way to make a new filter. I actually got the idea of paper replacement filters on the My-Kap web site. They give full instructions on how to do this with Melitta cone filters. I made up my own method using regular basket filters that I've already posted about on this blog. However, these filters sometimes failed resulting in coffee grounds in our cups. Not acceptable!
For a couple of years, I have been using reusable cotton muslin filters, that I created, to make tea. Why couldn't I use this same idea to make reusable filters for my Keurig? Why not! So I did! I've been using them over and over for a couple of months now and am so excited that I couldn't keep the idea to myself. I wanted to give them a chance to fail so I could fix them before I released them, but so far I haven't had a single problem at all! In fact, they're working so perfectly. No grounds in my coffee, the needle that punctures the bottom of the KCup does not puncture the cloth, the coffee isn't weak, the filters are so easy to use and clean. These filters have also given me another opportunity to try the My-Kap lids in conjunction with Glad Press N Seal with very satisfactory results. I've also tried using them with just the Glad Press N Seal and a polyurethane hair elastic band with great results as well.
Oh, and they work wonderfully with the My K Cup attachment that Keurig sells. A lot of people complain that this attachment makes weak coffee because of the way the filter basket is made. The coffee is forced out of the sides of the basket rather than down the center like the original K Cups. My filters solve this problem, too! In fact, because you don't use the filter basket, only the cloth filter, you can put more coffee into the attachment, the coffee is forced down the center of the cloth filter, resulting in stronger, more flavorful coffee!
I've listed my reusable K Cup filters in
my Etsy store. I hope this helps others who want to reuse their K Cups, too!
wool. I love the colors of Kureyon but don't like to make anything that touches the skin because it's so scratchy, therefore, a tea cozy was the perfect use for this yarn. It felts wonderfully but I was too lazy to make this one felted. It fits my Old Amsterdam 6 cup teapot perfectly.
I must admit that I didn't follow her instructions, just the concept. I watched videos on YouTube and had a demonstration of the stitch by Marta from my knitting group, Las Vegas Knitters. I kinda worked it up as I went along. The colors weren't planned but I just grabbed what yarn I had handy at the time. You see? I am a lazy crafter!
