You know you're "addicted" to tea when ....
Probably already said but, when people ask what you do for a hobby or for fun. Tea is the only thing you can think of.
When I tell people I like tea, this is usually how the conversation goes.
Me: I love tea!
Them: Oh me too!
Me: Really? What kinds of tea do you like?
Them: Oh, all kinds!
Me: …Like?
Them: Um………..I like Celestial Seasonings I guess.
And then I feel silly for getting excited.
…Or they just say, looking at your fervor as if you are odd, “ahh…mint.” And you get that deflated feeling. No offense to mint lovers, I happen to absolutely adore mint: tisanes, in blends, whatever…it’s just when the conversation ends limply like that…
Or they tell you they drink tea all day, and it turns out that they meant diet Snapple Peach Iced Tea. sad.
yup, I have one friend who has lipton brisk as his go-to tea (also loves the better stuff though) another who drinks bigalow green tea almost exclusively, though she cycles though stash fruity greens too.
What about having a husband who just the other day brought home a jug each of sweet and unsweetened black tea along with raspberry lemonade, orange juice and a snapple mango drink. I glared at him and he responded “What? I was thirsty!” I told him he could text me anytime from work and I will make him a pitcher of iced tea, he has his own tins! “Well”, he said, “I never think of it”.
And the next morning, the toddler opens the fridge, sees the jugs and says “I want ice tea”. “How about I brew you some tea?”. “No I want iced tea”, “I can make you iced tea”, “No I want this”, “Not even raspberry?”, “No”. So I cut it with water. Sigh.
Let’s not get into how ancient the bags of tea are in my mom’s cupboard, most were herbal but that Darjeeling in the back was probably picked up by my dad, in the Navy, 40 years ago. And she tried to tell me about the benefits of green tea when I was brewing for her. That’s okay, she got Verdant greens and a Zojirushi for Christmas and her birthday yesterday!
When the inside of your cupboard is a full inventory of what different tea’s you’ve got in storage and what the container they’re in look like.
When your desk at work contains more tea caddys than work related items.
When the two best moments of your day is the first – and the last cup of tea.
When you’ve got two different types of cups for coffee… and everything else is meant for tea.
When you’re on a students budget and quite happily spend most of your budget on tea.
When you leave for a week long vacation, your suitcase contains 3 sets of clothes, 1 travel kettle, two cups and 10 different kinds of tea.
When you return from said vacation with at least double the amount of tea you started out with.
!
When leaving the house on your way to an appointment you grab the latest Upton catalog in case you might have to wait.
I came up with a few more overnight ;)
- When your dentist suggest that drinking less tea might save you money on getting them cleaned.
- When you mother in law gives your a beautiful old teapot that has been in the family for generations because ’You’ll give it more love’.
- When people ask you to make tea when you visit them
- When all you get for christmas is tea cups, without haven asked for them! (and boy was I happy)
- When your mother knows nothing will make you happier than getting a tea tin as a surprise present
- When the mind numbing day at work is the best of the week, cause it allows you to drink tea for 8 hours straight.
When the tea ladies at your local tea house tell other customers to ask you which tea to recommend, because you’ve tried nearly all of them.
When you are offended that with the 100 or so varieties of tea you have in your home, your sitter refuses to drink it & has the never to ask you if you have some simple Red Rose, Twinnings etc. Or as he put it “normal tea”. I even offered to buy him some loose leaf brekfast tea or earl grey (they aren’t kinds I drink), he still refuses & wants bagged tea :( I give up
or they’ll call it “plain tea…just plain tea…” I’m sorry, I don’t carry that brand.
Inexplicable! Or…when you painstakingly brew the perfect cup of loose leaf tea, secretly, for a relative… that is in the same family of the bagged tea that your relative drinks…and he just drinks it, completely not appreciating that there is even a difference…He doesn’t smack his lips and say, “now hey there, THIS is what real tea should taste like!” Lol to each his own, more for me!
Finding this site after Googling storing tea in mason jars. If I can save money on tea storage then I can spend more money on tea and other needed teaware.
Realizing that most of my compost pile is tea leaves. Way more that a 2:1 ratio I believe, but most of the veggie scraps go to the chickens.
Telling your husband that “We have to talk…” and the conversation is about him interfering with your tea consumption habit by being so demanding of your time that you can’t properly brew enough pots of tea every day. (Just 3-4 pots of tea caused me to have withdrawals) To which he responds with, “Well isn’t there something that you can put your tea and water in and push a button and it does all the work for you like my coffee pot?” Yes, yes there is.
Calculating how much you spent on tea that you actually drank during the time he was underfoot and telling him how much it cost you per day to drink tea, knowing that it was much less than he spends on his daily 3-7 pot per day coffee habit. To which his response was “I will never say another word about your tea habit again, I didn’t realize you spent so little”
Feeling giddy and excited when he said those words to me. Spending New Years Eve at home with him while looking at Japanese tea websites. Realizing that I was ordering tea at midnight, thinking that is a lucky omen that it will be a good year.
Reading this thread, while drinking 4 pots of tea, coming across things that were new to me, researching them, and not feeling so alone in my obsession.
Since I am still somewhat new to my tea addiction and have caught myself trying to figure out how to take real tea out to eat with me, calling FedEx when it looked like my package was going to be delayed and I was afraid of running out of jasmine green, (won’t let that happen again) wondering how to assemble a travel tea set and matching food to my tea menu.
What really has me concerned about my new addiction to tea is when the thought crossed my mind about possibly downsizing my wine collection to make room for more tea stuff. See I can drink tons of tea and drive down the road, can’t legally do that with wine.
“Reading this thread, while drinking 4 pots of tea, coming across things that were new to me, researching them, and not feeling so alone in my obsession.”
Totally.
You plan a girls’ day at the mall with the intention of tricking your friends into going to the tea shop and becoming as hooked as you so you can all go buy tea at the same time to get a larger bulk discount so you can afford your 5-pots-a-day chai habit. True story. Didn’t work. Anyone wanna go tea shopping with me?
yah, tea planning with friends fails for me too, even the ones who also drink tea.
ME!!!!
Ok, just for fun I looked to see what state you live in. I’m in MN too – up in Blaine – lol.
That’s not SO bad, I have family in Blaine! There’s got to be a place with volume tea discounts somewhere between there and Plymouth :D
When the local university’s tea club tries to recruit you (and you’re not even a student but you sign up anyway), and you tell them all about Steepster..
When you spend more time on Steepster than you do on Facebook, twitter, pinterest and tumblr combined…
that’s hitting the nail on the head! hah i spend more time on here than all of those other sites combined easy.
When your family starts saying you need to stop buying tea because you have too many. And then they say you have a problem when you don’t.
When purchasing tea becomes exhilarating. There’s no such thing as “buyer’s remorse”!
When you have difficulty on deciding which tea you are in the mood to drink on a daily basis, especially after a long day during which you haven’t been able to drink tea.
A day during which you can’t make a constant flow of tea?! Tragic!!! I think I might actually die if I couldn’t have at LEAST two refills of my 1.8L kettle worth of tea in a day!
Usually I’m too occupied to notice, but when I do, I think about which tea I could be drinking. And the cringe because I can’t have it. >.<
I forgot to add this: last week I smuggled tea into my house for the first time and hid it. Never thought I’d cross that line.
I HAVE AN UPDATE.
Just now, I told my father that I had recently began writing tea reviews here, and he replied that I’m “beginning to be obsessive about tea.” I never felt so proud of my love for tea!
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