What's on your "Tea Do" list?

Short Term
- Get good pu’er storage. I have too many cakes now that I have to move into better storage options. I need to do this before I commit to buying a tong of a pu’er I really like.

In process
- better tea organization. The last few weeks I’ve been redoing tea tins, labeling stuff so I got better organization
- Drinking down/swap/sell some teas. My stash is huge!

Long Term
- Buy better/bigger shelving to display teas and teaware.
- fix my tea table. needs to be refinished.

Find ways to save more money to buy more tea. I want to drink even more tea.

Decide what to do with my teas I pulled out that I’m not drinking.

Short Term I’ve got three goals:

1. Finish off all my samples/sipdowns
2. Get my cupboard to under 100 teas (Which I think I’m technically at now if I don’t count samples)
3. Put together Halloween Packages for the H&Ws and my more frequent swap partners

Long Term I have two main goals in mind:

1. Learn more about/explore straight Oolongs (other than Milk Oolong)
2. Learn more about/explore straight Pu’Erh

And if I’m thinking really long term, I’d like to become a certified tea sommelier. But that’s probably going to require relocating…

This is cute! Made me think too.

Short term:
1. Now that the move is complete, become more active on here.
2. Find what teas deserve to be my staples.

Long term:
1. Investigate tea swaps.
2. Decide on organization.

- Finish my samples and almost empty bags.
- Try all the teas in my cupboard.
- Get rid of teas I really don’t like or that have lost their flavour.
- Host a tea party to share tea with friends.
- As soon as my mylar bags come in the mail, make sure all my teas are in good, air tight packaging & repackage some stuff for swaps/sales.
- Buy a variable temp kettle.

Long term, I need to get my organization system sorted out, which probably means buying a sideboard for my dining room, so I have a place to put tea and all my tea wares.

I’ve been working on my list of ‘tea’ things to do. First, was to clean out the various teas that I just won’t drink…they’re all in a box, and I’m close to sending this box out to someone, I think. After this, I need to figure out what comes to work, and what stays at home. I drink much more tea at work than at home, but occasionally I do drink at home (my daughter, who is 7, loves French Toast tea with some extra cinnamon). I also need to hone in on what I want to concentrate on.

My short-term list pretty much reflects everyone else’s: try more teas and learn to taste them more sensitively, keep the stash organized, sip down, etc. And I note with some amusement a common theme of “figure out what to do with teas I don’t favor.” It’s simply assumed that “toss them out” is not an option because how could we possibly do away with tea just because we don’t like it? Toss it? Don’t be absurd! It’s …it’s…it’s TEA, we don’t simply relegate it to the bin (even if we know in our heart of hearts that we’ll never drink it again).

At the same time I’m working on these tea-dos, I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about and researching my long-term goal of opening a tea shop (and my thanks to LuciTea for an ongoing discussion about this). I have some pretty clear ideas about what I want, but the possibilities are endless and it’s pure delight to find myself on this long path. Anyone else thought about this seriously, that is, gotten beyond pipe dream and started working on a business plan?

I got one item done tonight – labeled all my pu’erh cakes.

I still have to hang a shelf for tea wares, organize my non-pu’erh, get rid of quite a bit of non-pu’erh….

So much to do, so many teas to distract me. :p

I actually just want to go and experience a proper Japanese tea ceremony. And perhaps find some nice glass jars to better organize my “tea station” because right now it’s kind of a mess. :)