Making Your Travel Mug More User-friendly

If you are anything like me, you drink plenty of coffee out of "Travel Mugs".

However, one annoying thing about this is that the little air hole on the top is always too small! It seems to be designed for "sippers" rather than "gulpers" like me. I like to take a good solid pull from the coffee not some pathetic weeny sip.

The problem with the small air hole is that the air can't flow in as fast as the coffee is flowing out and so you get two annoying results:

1. The coffee doesn't come out fast enough so you have to hold it tipped up for a long time to get a decent mouthful. This can actually be dangerous as well! When you are tipping your coffee cup your eyes aren't watching the road. It would be better for everyone if these pulls on the cup would take less time.
2. The air hole makes an annoying whistling sound as the air rushes through the narrow hole at high velocity.

So here is a cheap, easy, 2-minute fix to the problem which you probably already knew but, like me, were too lazy to actually do it.

Just drill a bigger hole!

All you need is:

1. The lid of your Travel Mug
2. A drill and drill bit which is larger than the current hole
3. 2 minutes of free time

I used a Dremel to drill the hole. Just turn the inside part so that it is open, I.e. NOT like shown in the first picture. That is closed. You want the air hole open when the mouth hole is open, and you want it closed when the mouth hole is closed.

Now drill the hole through to widen the hole, then drill from the other side, clean up the frayed plastic from the edges and you are done! Bigger hole means no suction to prevent the coffee flow and no annoying whistle.

There! ..."Gulp"... Mmm.. that's good coffee. So much more relaxing now. Try it. You'll see what I mean.

Plus think of the lives you have saved by reducing the amount of time your eyes are distracted from the road! ;)