I need to reach my goal by Black Friday support group

I think you read my mind, I was just getting ready to post an update :) I haven’t made as much progress as I would have liked, but I was out of town for six of the last eight weeks. Right now I have Traveling Tea Box C to work my way through, so that is also slowing down my progress.

I’ve done much better about not ordering a lot of tea. I’ve placed 4 orders in the last 6 weeks, but they have been to restock items that I’m out of, that I drink often, and that have had a really good sale. I have decided that I will not open any unsealed packages for the next two weeks so I can make headway on my swaps. I have samples from three different swaps that I have not finished drinking. I’ve decided to organize that better today and come up with some sort of sip down strategy so I can start making progress on this as soon as I finish with Traveling Tea Box C tomorrow.

I’m also not swapping right now, although I am taking part in several traveling tea boxes. This should help me on several fronts since I can try a bunch of teas without necessarily increasing my numbers a whole bunch. I can also trade away some of the teas I didn’t like as much. I have made really good progress in swapping away anything I rated 75 or lower which will help me make more headway during sip downs. I have a habit of letting anything I’ve disliked gather dust so I’m trying to be better about that.

I’ve also gone on a tea buying hiatus, not due to lack of progress, but out of necessity. My refrigerator and air conditioner have died within ten days of each other sigh.

So not as much progress as I would like, but I’m getting organized and being smarter about what I order.

Ewwww fridge and A/C right together. I feel for you, that will put a damper on the tea budget.
Getting organized really helped me. It may not look like it to the average person – I don’t have a well organized, neatly labeled, everything in it’s place cupboard, but I have a system that seems to be working for me (other than that oooops, Teavivre order I just placed). Actually my teas are in 4 places right now. My favorites that are tin worthy, ones I stock and drink all the time are in a kitchen cabinet. The bits and pieces that are less than 4 cups worth are in my “sip down basket” on the counter. All the other OPENED packages are in a box on the microwave stand. The rest of my unopened stash is in drawers in the china cabinet. Basically, I need to drink the stuff that out first. I don’t open new packages unless I’m out of something specific. If I don’t have any dark oolong open, I can open a new package, but not until then.
You’ll be ok, slow down the swaps – unless there is more going out than coming in. Work on drinking your sip downs, but not to the point of obsession. You’ll just get frustrated. I’m trying for two a day, then I can drink whatever I want from my opened packages. This keeps teas getting low enough to be moved into the sip down basket. It’s good to have goals, but you also have to be enjoying your teas.
I’m just rambling on about what I’m doing, you of course need to find what works for you – and have some fun doing it. :))

Working on getting well organized has really helped, although my teas are still spread out into 4 different places as well. I hope to remedy that soon, I’m trying really hard to cut down on clutter throughout the house before all of my family comes to visit in September. The house tends to look like a bomb has gone off, but most of that is due to my toddler, not necessarily my tea.

Right now I have a cabinet filled with 24 tins of my favorites and when I place orders I’m trying to only refill those tins and not order a ton of samples. I do like to rotate some of those teas seasonally so I’ve been trying to sip down my summer teas and make room for my fall/winter teas. I did break my not ordering a lot of samples rule for my Teavivre order, but I wanted to take advantage of the anniversary sales and purchased a ton of samples to ensure spent enough to receive the free tea. This really should work out in my favor come Black Friday because I’ll have a better idea of what I want to order in large amounts to take advantage of the sales.

I do need to come up with a way to better organize my samples, but first I need to find a place to put the giant 25lb bag of rice that is taking up half the space in my tea cabinet. I now have 2 small baskets sitting on my table one for swap teas I need to drink and the other with teas I need to sip down or give away. My unopened packages are all sitting in a huge box on one of my dining room chairs (out of sight out of mind) in hopes that I won’t be tempted one day to open a whole bunch. Right now I’m trying to stick fairly firmly to the don’t open anything new rule. After a couple weeks I’ll let myself open up a few as a treat, but I’m going to make myself open up the oldest ones first.

My goal for sip downs was 10 per week, but now that I’m out of small amounts I’ll need to reevaluate what is reasonable. Maybe one large package per week plus working on my swap teas. Either way I try not to worry about the numbers, I should be able to reach my goal now that I have a plan. All I need to do is concentrate on enjoying my tea :)

A plan is always a good thing. Wishing you all the best in accomplishing your goals.

I’m just going to hang my head in shame, go sit in the corner, and drink some tea. All my “best laid plans” and progress has come to a screeching halt…..I don’t think I have any chance of making 75 by Black Friday.

It sounds like you’re doing pretty well with your goals! I promised myself no more tea until Black Friday after my recent Butiki and Verdant Orders and I’ve kept to that. Having the travelling tea box right now certainly helps and knowing the other one will come in a little bit also helps curb my Steepster zeal of “must-try-all-the-teas”!

my birthday orders and a few other things have totally made me slide…right now it’s a fine balance i have going, drinking things down before i pick more up…i just haven’t managed to clear the 200 mark yet… but uh maybe i can manage to get through September with no additional orders. i have at least stuck with my other two mini goals of drinking my 52 teas and my older teas!

Welcome :) I think everyone that visits this thread has more tea than they would have ever thought possible.

For me, it was difficult to figure out how much was the right amount of tea. I’m still working on that really, but right now I think that the right amount is no more tea than I can drink in one year.

I’m still pretty bad at hoarding my samples and single servings, but now I’m on a mission to try them all and come up with a list of my favorites. I won’t know what to order come Black Friday if I don’t drink what I currently have.

That’s a good system! I bet you don’t feel deprived of buying and at the same time feel like your getting through teas.

I’ve been doing really well at keeping to my promise of not making any on-line orders. I even resisted the Verdant blends sale and I was so tempted to get all of the blends!

I’ve also been trying to log what teas I have more accurately. I know have more than 80 teas in my Steepster cupboard, which is way more accurate than what I did have before. Realistically, I probably have 20 other sample floating around, so I probably have over 100 teas now, but I am slowly getting more organized and feel like my tea buying/drinking/sampling is more under control now. I’m much more at ease!

Thanks for the inspiration. I’ve been trying to reduce the price of my orders ($35 at Teavivre instead of $85 at Upton) but haven’t been at all good about sipdowns. I like to save the last cup or two just so I can try it again some day.

Today I’m pulling out a bunch of small packets to sip down over the weekend. The goal is to eliminate at least four, which doesn’t sound like much but most are 6-10 grams.

I’m guilty of doing the same thing just to see how my taste have changed over time. I’ve decided to try and stop this, so I don’t have as many small samples floating around.

It’s so encouraging to learn that I’m not the only one who does this! There’s something almost wistful about sipping down a tasty tea that you like but probably won’t keep in stock for whatever reason.

No worries, you have plenty of time left to get things under control. You’ve set some goals, so you’re already on your way :)

I can finally dig in to all my verdant samples this week as i’ve been saving them for when my swap partner in australia was closer to being ready to try thing…so they’d stay fresh the longest. I’m hoping for some mad sipdowns in the near future because of that!

I just found out a friend’s suitemates drink tea, so they’ll be receiving a nice box of various teas soon. I wish I could give them more, but I don’t know what they like and my friend hasn’t really given me any details except they seem to prefer flavoured teas, so I have a bit of everything prepared for them.

Also, my massive TeaVivre order came in a few days ago. My teabox is officially overflowing. Whoops!

I’ve been planning a big birthday order for months, but as I thought about the order, I realized I was going to receive a travelling tea box within a week or two. I decided to push the order back into October, so won’t spend any money at all on tea in Sept. Now all I need to do is figure out how to put myself off for October.

I had planned on a massive Verdant sip-down this week, but put it off until I can taste again… stupid allergies.

I’m working on Verdant and Teavivre sipdowns over the next week. I find I don’t want to commit to fancy tea sometimes because I’ll need to review it, and then I don’t ever get to it. Now, I’ve got them all in an easy to grab box so I’ll poke through it first.

That sucks about the allergies.

Sipdowns don’t seem to work for me. I sipped down 4 teas last weekend and got 4 samples in the mail on Monday. The biggest problem is that most of my samples are 1/2 ounce or more, so I need to drink a lot just to put myself into position for a sipdown.

I tend to use the week to drink whatever i want, leaning toward things that are older, or i have a lot of…so that eventually i end up with teas where they are near sipdown quantity. Those go in a box for the weekends when i have time to sit and brew lots of different teas to get through my sipdowns. :)

So THAT’S why you always seem to have a lot of sipdowns all in a row. Good strategy, I think I’ll give it a try. Thanks for the idea!

Last day of September, and I’m sitting squarely at 60 teas. I dont know if I’ll be able to sip down into the 50’s today, as was my hope. I dont have tea making abilities at work (boo), and after work I’m making dinner with a friend, so I will be away from my teas again. Well, at least I’m very close to where I wanted to be at this point.
Now, to get down to at least 50 by Black Friday….

60 days until Black Friday, you still have plenty of time. My goal for the day is to sip-down 2 more teas which means i’ll have 100 I need to sip-down before Black Friday.

We are in awe. You deserve to have a wonderful Black Friday.

haha what i want to know is what you started at :)

Congrats on getting to a manageable cupboard size for yourself

bowing to the master

I want to be you when I grow up

hehe, i started around 80-90 and it stressed me out so much to have even that many teas! never again! I am totally in control. lol