One of my favorite vices is coffee.

We have a Keurig in our house but we use the single serve cups with grounds & made that switch recently for a number of reasons.

I said we all thought the coffee tasted better when I was talking to a friend recently after making the change.

I said how actually these cups weren’t messy or hard to clean.  I felt they were better overall to use & the coffee tasted better than what came from the actual standard k-cup.

(These are example of something you can use if you wish to try the non k-cup method.  You just put the coffee grounds in them & clean them after you use them.  They are also supposedly dishwasher safe, though I usually just give them a good thorough hand cleaning.  This brand actually retails in a 4 pack that is cheaper than the single cups you sometimes find. )

I then continued the conversation with talking about all these Pinterest projects one could do with recycled K-cups. I found a bunch a year ago when I was looking for craft project ideas for the holiday season.

I was curious about how sanitary that was to use them (germaphobe that I am now) & how you might actually really make sure the cups were actually clean inside?    (I didn’t feel like washing them was quite enough to disinfect the plastic adequately & I was pretty sure a dishwasher would melt them.)

That lead to a discussion of what exactly is inside a k-cup?

Just grounds, a sleeve & grounds, or what?

My friend donated a cup to the cause & I did some exploratory “surgery”.

Here’s the result:

 

It’s a fine netting or webbing. Not even sure what it’s made of & the grounds are inserted around it.  It seems & looks like it is along the edges only although I didn’t pull it all the way out.  It appears to look & seem like a meshy net for the grounds.

But that answered some of my questions.  (Also makes me glad we made the switch.)

Still I don’t know if I’d want to stash herbs in them like a Good Housekeeping article suggests (slide 3), or use them for Jello Shots like Buzzfeed suggests.

I suppose it depends on the brand & the quality of the plastic.

I know that Chock Full of Nuts coffee doesn’t even use plastic for their cups. They just use like a cloth-like bottom that’s compostable, which I know is better and more environmentally friendly.

Not sure if other brands have this same set up, but I also don’t have the patience to also tape over all the holes in the bottom you’d need to cover for some of these projects even if I managed to clean them up enough.  Seems too tedious.

But now (in case you were curious) you now know the general inner anatomy of a k-cup.

See, I’ve spent my wait time pondering important things…(not quite the meaning of life, I know.)