Kitchen Drinking Water Dispenser Station

We recently stopped into Macy's kitchen section (which requires us to go up the third floor at our mall) to look for something luggage related.  I told Brent that if we go up there, I am going to get sucked into the Martha Stewart section and I will not be able to leave without something.  He must have thought I was joking because we continued up the two flights of escalators.

There are few places that I scour and make wish lists and drool over catalogs...they are Martha Stewart's kitchen and dining line at Macy's and Crate and Barrel.  As I had assumed, I found more than one thing I wanted, they were kind of expensive, but for today only I could get up to 40% with their sale and my Macy's card.  They know how to get me.  So this was by no means a necessary frugal purchase.  It was a splurge.  But it is so beautiful. 

So here is how it works.  I have been a water snob for years.  Only filtered for me please.  So I fill up our Brita filter.  I then set it up on our toaster oven to fill a pitcher of water.  This pitcher used to be my water goal for the day...hence the washi tape lines.  The pitcher is bigger than one filling into the Brita so I can let it pour and walk away.  It's fantastic.  Once it fills, I then fill it into my beautiful new water dispenser.

I'll admit it is a little bit of a process.  But I have found that letting the water run and filling the dispenser up to the top, I can do this every few days instead of daily like I did with just the Brita filter or pitcher.  Taking the extra few minutes to fill once saves me water waiting time in the long run.

Plus I have this new little adorable water station.  I joked that we are like a nice hotel now that we always have fresh water available.  It really is a silly luxury but makes drinking water a bit more fun and accessible.

I took my own advice and decided to style the space like I did my kitchen sink.  I have lemons on hand if I want to add a little flavor to my water.  I have found that by actually styling small spaces on the counter, it encourages me to keep it clean.  I try my best to get dishes in the dishwasher and then put away as much as possible so that I have a cleared space to cook, as well as a pretty place to look at each day.

Propping the water dispenser on the books was so that I could fit a large mason jar cup underneath the spout.  Though the dispenser is already elevated I was finding that only smaller canning jar cups would fit.  This worked for awhile but then I decided that I needed it to be taller so that I could fill up bigger glasses of water in order to encourage drinking more water. 

I considered putting the dispenser on the edge of a counter so that it did not need the extra elevation.  But I found that I then had to hold my cup while it filled with water.  The dispenser has nice flow but not as fast as pouring with a pitcher.  I like to be able to put my glass down while it fills while I put away a few dishes.  Waiting for water to fill is just another excuse to drink less water.  Now I have no reason to enjoy another glass of water every few hours all the while enjoying the luxury of my very own kitchen.

Perhaps one day we will have a refrigerator with filtered water.  Until then, I will continue to live in not as fancy water drinking land with this cute little dispenser.