How do you stop the compulsion to buy buy BUY more tea?!

Not only do I have an obsession with buying tea, but I also have an serious addiction to buying teapots & teacups & saucers. And I see no stopping at all for any of it! Not until I have it all!!! (insert maniacal laugh here)

I don’t think there is such a thing as too much. Right now I have three teapots & about five teacups sitting on my drainboard drying. And as I type this I’m drinking a pot of Red Velvet Chocolate. I will not stop buying teas until I have tried everything out there!!!!!!

Ha! I don’t know. I ask myself the same question sometimes. Since I’ve only gotten into tea for the last year or so, I feel like I want to try everything. But my personality is such that I get obsessed with a new hobby or interest for a few years and then I move onto something else.

Before I was a tea junkie, I was a makeup junkie (still am) and the best thing I’ve learned is to “shop your stash.” Whenever I get the urge to buy something new that I don’t really need, I go through all the stuff I already have. There’s always stuff I haven’t thought about in awhile and it feels like new again.

Stop? Why in the world would anyone want to stop? Tea is delicious and fun.
That said, there is room for budgeting and pacing your tea purchases and not go on an all-out spree. I tend to buy in splurges. I place 2-3 orders every couple of months. Admittedly, I usually spend more than I plan to, because all the teas look so good, but stay within a reasonable range of my budget.

I only get paid once a month (yay teacher salary) so I tend to do all my purchases right when I get paid (I basically just submit shopping carts that have accumulated all month Haha) then my tea spending trickles out as I realize I need to make my paycheck last an entire month and instead of submitting shopping carts I just save them for the next paycheck. I already think my tea budget is going to go towards a 3 month 52teas subscription…. I spend about $75-100 a month on tea which makes me nauseatdd to think about, but you figure you spend $2.50 for one glass of tea at Starbucks, so if I drank my 5-10 cups of tea from there… Well, I’m definitely on the positive end of that deal ;)! I just save my monthly latte for when latte guy comes to school hehehe…

2 things that help my spending…. My boyfriend is hooked on fishing (no pun intended) so he gets his packages of fishing goods and I get my tea and neither of us feel guilty… And #2 And this isn’t just for tea, I HIGHLY recommend it for EVERYONE who has a smart phone… Download the app “loot” and “loot premium” both free, and keep track of your spending. Being able to see the number ticking down and knowing that’s for food, gas, clothes, shampoo, fun, etc. Helps keep me in line!!!

The fact that I have tea I still haven’t drank will never stop me from buying more! SO I have to depend on sheer monetary survival, not logic ;)

Good luck!!

I predict that a big swap is looming somewhere in the near future for us compulsive purchasers, not so we can get new teas in the swaps, but to clear space away from the teas we don’t like so we won’t feel bad about buying more ;)

The way I figure it (read: the way I justify it to myself) is that if I ever get to the point where I don’t know exactly what I have and exactly where to find the tea I want at any given time, then I need to slow down. I also had to teach myself that yes, while the stickers on the tea of the month at DavidsTea are pretty, I don’t need 50g of a tea I haven’t tried. I can just get 10g, and that’s enough for De and I to both try it.

That’s where I lucked out. I got my wife into tea, so now it’s something we can enjoy together. We also recently went through our entire collection and put it all in a spreadsheet. I’m thinking that’s something we need to do periodically, if only to weed out the teas we no longer enjoy/never enjoyed.

There are days where I drink 4-6 cups of tea a day, and others where I’m lucky to have even one. But as long as I’m still having those 4-6 cup days, I’m okay with bringing new tea in. We have learned that if it’s our first order of a certain tea or from a certain company, we buy the smallest size available. If we like it, we can reorder later and that way we’re not stuck with thousands of grams of tea we don’t like. shrugs.

I’ll let you know when I figured it out myself. I applied at Teavana just so things won’t be so expensive O_o

I’m generally pretty good about not buying if my tea cabinet is full because I hate clutter, contained or not. The exception? Sales, especially groupon-type sales. I currently am sitting on two such deals (tiesta tea and tea district) plus gift certificates to two different places. The groupons aren’t a huge deal at the moment, although I’m trying to put off buying until I clear up some space in the cabinet, but the gift cards are cluttering up my wallet so I want to spend those. I’m trying to convince myself to wait for a free shipping + coupon sale at Teavana and remind myself that the Todd and Holland gift certificate (the store is literally just down the street from my house) doesn’t expire so there’s no rush. But my wallet is really full of gift cards at the moment and these would be easy to clean out.

The hard part for me is resisting sales. When a company offers a discount of 20% or more, I tend to justify the purchase with the thought of “look how much I’m saving!” It goes without saying I would “save” a lot more if I didn’t purchase anything, but it’s so hard to resist those sales.

Over the weekend I cleaned out and organized my tea cabinet. I thought revisiting my stash would help get me through this urge I have right now to purchase more. But instead, it only highlighted how I have too much mediocre black tea and not enough high quality Japanese greens.

I’ve come to the conclusion I’m not going to be able to avoid making purchases altogether, but what I need to do is shop smarter. After being on Steepster for a year, I have a better idea of what I like and what I don’t like. I’m not going to waste my money on tea types that I’ve never liked, even in sample size, and even if it’s highly rated and hyped. I’m going to try to do more swapping, because that is essentially getting new stuff for free, and freeing up space in my cupboard by sending my unwanted teas to people who might enjoy them. I’m also going to try to be better about resteeping leaves while they still have some flavor in them.