tea organization
My tea was a mess. I sort of tried to keep it in 3 containers–one blacks, one herbals and one everything else. But it was totally unappealing and confusing and all the bags were different sizes and I would end up forgetting about the awesome tea I had.
Until today! I went on a taxonomic spree!
My new sections, totally skewed for my tastes in order of size are:
Herbals (Hibiscus, Mints & Chamomiles, oh my!)
Earl Greys & Flavored Blacks (i.e. almonds mainly)
Chais (I <3 all kinds of them)
Greens & Whites (I don’t love either)
Unflavored Blacks (Breakfast Teas & British stuff mainly)
Iced Teas (mixes, and tea you can brew cold)
Drink Mixes (Kool Aids, Tang, Emergen-C powder)
Now, this goes against most things I teach people to do. I mean, ideally there would be a large box called Blacks and there would be boxes inside called Flavored and Unflavored and inside Flavored would be Earl Greys, Nutty, Fruity, etc. But I have three bags of fruity black tea, and I don’t want to open up 3 matryoshka-like containers to get to them! And Drink Mixes aren’t even tea! What about Tisanes? Well those aren’t invited to my house. And when I want Hibiscus tea, I have to remember I have herbal non-caffeinated hibiscus tea in the Herbals and Green Hibiscus in the Greens. Harumph. Real things can’t really be polyhierarchied, unless I split it into two bags which seems a step too crazy.
Even though my system isn’t perfect, I can take heart that 1. it’s just tea and 2. it works! At least I made sure to use consistent plurals. This taxo project was constrained by the number and size of tea containers I own. The latter is not a constraint I usually deal with. And my hatred of Tisanes was sort of like a political issue that constrains real life projects.
Only organizing digital things makes me forget sometimes how people look for tangible things. Or maybe that’s an excuse to try and get a lesson out of my compulsion. Either way, come drink some tea!
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