What are your tea goals?
My tea related goals:
1. Do not buy any more tea for the rest of the summer (please see the tea buying hiatus support group – http://steepster.com/discuss/5244-tea-buying-hiatus-support-group).
2. Get my cupboard from 162 teas to below 100.
3. Make the perfect cup of chai, from scratch.
I was wondering if anyone else had any tea goals they are currently working on or have accomplished?
Mine is to use up what I have and buy more. I’m the kind of person who naturally likes things to be even so I unconsciously gravitate towards the tea packet with the most left in it and end up with lots of packages with only 1 or 2 servings left. I’m at a point now where I have too many packages to justify new purchases and I want to try new things!
To own all the teas! /grand gesture/
But really, these’re probably my actual goals. Modest though they may be, I figure modest is easier to handle at the moment. I’ll think grander when I get these done. Lol.
1 – Find a green tea that I love/can drink. Lol.
2 – Buy/master the art of using a gaiwan…Though I do need a gaiwan first. (Anyone have any recommendations for a good cheap (including shipping) gaiwan?)
3 – Collect a set (of 4) seasonal tea cups & saucers to have fancy tea when my friends come over. – I have one of these already, a spring themed one. Just need the other 3.
Lala – No buying tea the rest of the summer? I wish you all the luck with that one. All the sales that have been showing up lately seem hard to resist.
I really like the earthen gaiwan (brown) that I picked up from butiki but I like a more “solid” feeling gaiwan…there are tons of options out there if you just want one that you can uh “practice” with….mine was purchased with that intent but also because it suits me and my preferences :)
Well my no tea buying for the summer is quite a lofty goal. I barely made it through the don’t buy tea today goal, but it made me feel like I can make it. Although 52 teas usually gets me.
I love your third goal Shadowfall! I don’t have any fancy tea cups/saucers – just bubble cups and large mugs/timolinos that I steep in.
Sil – did you have to pay a lot for shipping for your Gaiwain? I think this one is pretty cute: http://www.butikiteas.com/images/paisley%20gaiwan.png Also, what tea did you dedicate it for?
cavo – it’s not clay etc so i use multiple teas in it since it’s not really absorbing the flavours like others would/could. Shipping wasn’t too bad but if you get an urge for something like that we can send it through my tea mule and you can pick it up from me lol
1. Get my cupboard from 225 down to 200 before placing my next order and make it a small order (I’ve made a pretty good dent in the last two days, I’m down to 217). My goal before Christmas is to be down around 100.
2. Limit my tea spending to only $20 per month unless I have money in PayPal (I consider that an added bonus and incentive to sell more of my books that I’ve been meaning to get rid of)
3. Try not to come home with a ton of tea on my vacation
4. Rotate out my spring teas, pick my summer teas and finish organizing my tea cabinet.
5. Actually use the tea pot and cups my mother bought me for my birthday in May.
I may be successful at #3, but only because I’m going to be in rural Kansas and Oklahoma visiting family. There shouldn’t be anything to tempt me this year.
and #5 will have to wait till I’m home for a significant length of time, but I’ll get there eventually.short sorceress – better to aim to be down to 100 by black friday…guarantee you can be back UP to 200 after those sales lol
I waited for christmas last year after passing up black friday sales and they weren’t as good…so not making the same mistake this year lol
I’m glad I joined up before black friday. All the hype got me to try ordering from Della Terra – my first online tea purchase, and it’s been great (downhill?) since then!
Now I’m prepared and will have $150 I’m allowed to spend without regret/guilt on tea. (Unless for some reason, I still haven’t found a job at that point. But I doubt that’ll be the case).
I’d better get to saving, I’ve only got $50 in my piggy bank since I just robbed it for gas money. I looked through the discussion boards to check out the sales from last year since I wasn’t a member yet. Boy were there some good deals, maybe I should go on a tea buying hiatus this summer.
i’m trying to buy as little tea as possible this summer…zero isn’t doable for my so i make mini goals of “go a week, go 3… etc”
Zero isn’t doable for me either so I’ve been trying to swap more to tide me over. I was doing really well until I saw the Tazo 50% sale, then the next day iHeartTeas tempted me with her sell off. She had a bunch of tea from 52teas I’ve been wanting to try. My cupboard is officially up to 231 now and I won’t be able to drink any of that for the next two weeks since I’m out of town.
Haha yay! I have a smaller cupboard than someone out there besides kittenna! Lol
Lets see how I’ve done in the last few months.
1. I’m up to 270 teas in my cupboard, but I’ve made good progress on drinking older teas and trading away things I just don’t care for.
2. I’ve only spent $13 this month, but last month I didn’t do so well with this goal.
3. Goal Accomplished! I came home with 3 small bottles of Red Diamond Sweet Tea which I can’t buy up North.
4. Goal Accomplished! In fact, I’ve already started sipping down my summer teas to make room for autumn teas. My tea cabinet is organized, I’m just trying to come up with a better way of organizing swap teas and items I’m wanting to trade away.
5. I still haven’t used the tea pot, but I did buy a nice tea tray and they are out on display.
hmm…tea goals…
1. Get my cupboard down to 150 by November (for black friday Sales) – sub goal of that is 200 by July and then back to 200 by the August lol
2. Try at least 10 new companies by the end of the year
3. Try to create a list of 20 flavoured and 30 unflavoured i’d like to keep in my cupboard on a permanent basis. The other 100 or so can be things that rotate in/out (swaps, trying out new places etc..)
Basically just to enjoy drinking what I have rather than yearning for the next great thing (or wishing to be done with the old). If I don’t like it, I will re-home it. If I do like it, I will consider ordering but I don’t really need to.
It would be really good to sipdown some of the way old flavoured teas I have, but I think many of them will be re-homed or composted.
Really I just want to enjoy it.
Thanks! It’s really my goal with a lot of things right now. Life is frequently difficult and/or stressful but I have a lot of great things to enjoy, and I should enjoy them while I can.
That is a great goal! Sometimes I get hung up on getting rid of old tea (sipdowncrazy), or excited about trying the new that I forget to just sip. Sip without anything else in mind. I’ve got a much better handle on that now though!
great topic!
Sadly, most of my goals are buybuybuy!
- Get a couple more yixing pots.
- more owl tea items
- better pu’er storage / aging set up
- knit or crochet some more teapot cozies
- get more cute teacups for blog
- get a tea table!
The doozy – get better organized. My tea spans a bookshelf and the dining room table, with another bookshelf with teaware in another room. Breaking down the goal:
1. get more tins (and decorate them if needed)
2. Get a new shelf, one with doors to protect from crazy roommates that do nerf gun fights
3. find new spot for said tea cabinet. (requires me to convince husband to throw out random furniture we don’t use in living room)
4. Make teas more visible so they don’t get lost in the back
5. Ensure earthquake proofing of tea shelf. I’m in california, so yeah.
6. Before and after pics?
I am so confused as to how I don’t follow you. I am all about owl tea items too: have you also ransacked Marshalls and TJ Maxx and the like for every owl mug? My fireplace mantle is now dedicated to owls thanks to them haha.
I am always on the lookout for owl teaware but it is surprisingly rare. I really want a cute round owl teapot but I haven’t found one I really like (and I’ve looked HARD). Owl mugs are definitely easier.
Umm, Silk Road has some owl stuff. I was so tempted to buy it when I was there last.
https://silkroadteastore.com/shop/cup-midnight-owl/dp/2747
https://silkroadteastore.com/shop/teapot-midnight-owl/dp/2746
https://silkroadteastore.com/shop/mug-owl-blue/dp/2738
They come in different colours, too.
A big let down was I saw this, and procrastinated on it because of the shipping costs, and someone bought it https://www.etsy.com/listing/127078940/owl-tea-steeper-vintage-teapot-norcrest
OMGsrsly – I’ve seen those owl things (they are common in asian markets in Chinatown in NYC), but not exactly what I’m looking for. They are pretty cute, though! They also make penguin ones.
I troll ebay for owl teawares occasionally and sometimes I am tempted, but never enough to buy anything, yet!
Count me in as another owl fan. I had luckily gotten the last owl mug that my local Pier One had, though unfortunately missed the matching teapot. pouts and also got another owl cup at the British Pantry when I was there last summer. Oooo gotta go back and get there for a proper lunch this time!
I think this one is nice on etsy.
http://img2.etsystatic.com/012/0/7822006/il_570xN.430749430_jkf9.jpg
Wow, whooo ever knew there was a following for owl tea items? Didn’t know I’d fall for them, too, till I clicked on the links in this thread and then had to start an online search, too! This is too cute: http://compare.ebay.com/like/280812709911
Anyway, when you figure out how to set it up so that you can see what’s in the back I hope you re-post with a pic because I can’t figure out how to do it without wasting space on one of those tiered shelves or a little lazy susan. Thinking about mounting ledges on the back side of the cupboard door. There needs to be a way to make more visible room somehow.
Aside from reducing my cupboard down to 75-100 teas, and getting a handle on some staples I want to keep around all the time, I’d really like to get a better idea of the differences between types of teas.
How is a Yunnan different from an Assam, Orange Pekoe, or Darjeeling? What’s the difference between all the types of green teas? I’m going to keep sipping away until finally my brain is able to tell the difference and I’m the ULTIMATE TEA SNOB! (Mwahahah) But seriously – it’d be pretty cool to try something blind and be able to ID it, even if it was just in general terms.
This is one of my goals too omg. I drink a bunch of black teas and I can tell they’re different but I’m still baffled at how some people can just sniff a tea and know the region and stuff. It’s like. Whoa. How.
My goals:
1. Complete survey of tea types so I know what I like best. At the moment, the list is medium roast oolong, Keemun, and Darjeeling.
2. Establish a list of about 20 favorites to drink most of the time.
3. Get buying under control so I won’t feel guilty buying on Black Friday. I keep trying to take a month off but succumb to temptation, and the hiatus support group seems to have turned into another “look what I bought today” group.
Following Wheezybee’s fine example, I’m going to grade my performance on achieving these goals
1. I’ve tried a lot of new teas but mostly in the old categories. I have discovered a few white teas that I really enjoyed so I’m moving into that area. I couldn’t get into Pu-Erh,but still trying. Haven’t had as much green tea as I should; I have a lot of samples lying around the house. B-
2. I made my list of about 20 must-have teas and have been using it as a guide to future orders A-
3. I haven’t been able to go a month without buying but my once-a month purchases have been getting smaller ($30-40 rather than 50-100). Some progress? C+
I’m still trying to get into pu-erh, I bought some that was better quality and I hope that helps, but it may end up just not being for me. I’m not giving up on it yet though, after all, I did manage to change my opinion on rooibos.
I’ve also found that my purchases have been getting smaller over time. I’ve moved to restocking old favorites rather than ordering a ton of new teas to try.
If you need more help, come visit us again in the Black Friday support group :)
1. Start an excel sheet before the stash exceeds 25! Otherwise I’ll never get around to it.
2. Don’t buy more Golden Fleece. Don’t do it. I don’t have money I caaaaaan’t!
3. No more buying anything until school starts again in late August!
4. Do 3 more swaps over the summer :)
Hi I was wondering what the excel sheet for keeping track on your teas contained? sounds like something I should do!
Well i haven’t seen other people’s, but it would probably just contain the name, type, company, and approx how much i have left (like oh a whole tin or oh no i gotta get more). If anyone else has any tips lemme know because i am such a newbie ar this
-get way better at using a gaiwan
-figure out which tea will be devoted to my yixing teaware, yay
-continue my epic One Earl Grey To Rule Them All quest…40 down, something like 40 to go
-play around with doing latte-ish stuff with matcha, maybe i will like it more that way. barring that, find a makeshift chawan so i stop making messes on the kitchen counter.
-possibly venture into mate, and if i like it get a david’s-style fauxbombilla
-make some earl grey ice cream or paletas!!
-most immediately, get an appropriately sized glass teapot to steep my blooming teas in for the summer…i have a couple makeshift options (including the bottom part of a vacuum coffeepot), but none really do the things justice
you just reminded me that I have some lavender earl grey that I’ve been meaning to make into ice cream.
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