If Mom is the one who has to clean up the mess, and Dad is a d-bag who doesn’t care about the mess he’s making, then the options are limited.
Ideally, Dad would be responsible for cleaning up his own coffee mess. Mom could refuse to do it, but if Dad doesn’t care about the mess, then he’s not going to do it. Because he doesn’t care. Worse, he’s likely making a mess on purpose to punish her.
It’s really not difficult to produce a pot of coffee without trashing the kitchen. Perhaps your dad is passive-aggressively trying to force your mom to make his coffee.
Your mom could do all the coffee-making herself. Or she could continue to clean up the mess herself. Or she could allow him to freely be a pig and not clean it up, which probably would drive her the most nuts, which is what he probably wants. He doesn’t care about the mess but he knows she does… so he makes a mess.
IMHO, their issues run deeper than than your dad’s “incompetence” with making coffee. A child can be taught to make a pot of coffee without destroying the kitchen. Assuming your dad is not significantly mentally handicapped, there are deeper reasons for this behavior.
Probably by now, that dynamic can’t be changed. It’s not like middle-aged people suddenly have an epiphany and realize that changing their ways can make everything better, and suddenly rainbows will shoot out of his ass. He is who he is, and he sounds like a real d-bag. Maybe Mom is too, maybe she’s a really horrid wife, and that’s why he does it, I don’t know.
This sounds like an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond.
You could go with a K-cup maker and use the refillable basket instead of the prepacked cups. That gets you your Maxwell House (gag). The time required for a K-cup brew is so short that the three cups shouldn’t be a problem either - even if he chuggs a cup the next one should be ready before he finishes the first.
I really don’t think Dad is deliberately setting out to aggravate Mom.
Dad just doesn’t see what the big deal is. He makes his coffee, he throws away the grounds, so what?
He doesn’t visually process the mess. If the grounds hit the trash can, great, if they don’t, so what? The house won’t fall down, little children won’t die, the world won’t come to an end.
It goes back to the way he was raised. HIS mother probably waited on him hand and foot. If you want to undo that type of training, you gotta start early.
If this situation truly gives Mom a lot of grief, then she needs to just take over the coffee making task.
And Dad better be taking her out to dinner more often.
~VOW
When your Dad makes a mess and won’t clean it himself, your Mom can clean it up, including throwing out the coffee maker. I’d guess she wouldn’t have to throw out more than two before the problem resolves itself.
I don’t expect your Mom will go for this, but I don’t think any other solution will work either, unless your Mom is willing to be assertive with your Dad.
gwendee and Implicit have the right idea. Those little pouches stopped a fission-level event in it’s tracks at my last office.
One faction demanded a trash can with a push-lid to avoid having to see/smell the trash, and the other said Ok fine, but you’ll have to live with the fact that coffee drips all over the place when I try to empty the filter basket into that thing. Then the first group found they actually couldn’t live with that. . .
Filter packs. Wasteful - until you compare them to the financial and environmental impact of thermonuclear warheads.
As for me, who likes a strong cup of coffee? I started adding a tsp of instant to each cup.
That’s what we used back when I worked at the roofing company years and years ago - the roofers/office guys/mechanics would make a HUGE mess if I didn’t use these. And being the only chick around, it would always fall to me to clean it up. So these were a lifesaver.
As for a strong cup of coffee? I’d throw two in at a time.
I think this is going to be the solution, thank you: a hell of a lot of coffee packaged this way plus a new coffee maker makes an interesting Christmas gift idea, and I’m sure it’ll be a hit with Mom too.
That may solve the immediate problem. But as noted up thread, the fundamental problem seems to be that your dad is a selfish dick who doesn’t care abour your mothers feelings.
There are a few, simple things like this coffee issue that drive my wife nuts, that I don’t get. You know what my answer? I do what makes my wife happy because she’s the only human I’ll go though the rest of my life with and I love her to death.
Any other anwser is just selfish, and enables your father.