There are a lot of fall activities and flavors that I can take or leave, but one thing I get excited about when the summer heat subsides is tea. On a cool, rainy afternoon, drinking a hot cup of tea is wonderfully cozy. (I think I just realized why tea is so popular in the British Isles.) My growing tea collection was a mess until I figured out the best way to store tea. If you’re a fellow tea-lover with an unruly stack of boxes and tins of tea, here are some guidelines and ideas for how to keep your tea organized.
Tea Storage Guidelines
First, let’s go over the basics of how to store tea. The enemies of tea are light, heat, moisture, and oxygen. So that means the best place to store your tea is cool, dry, dark, and airtight. The airtight part might not be a concern if your teabags are individually-sealed, but it’s important for loose-leaf tea. Fortunately many teas come in their own airtight tins or resealable bags.
Even if you aren’t storing your bagged tea in an airtight container, you at least want to try to keep it away from strong smells. Nothing would ruin a good cup of tea than having it taste like the garlic and onions you cooked up last night for dinner.
Also, it won’t keep forever. Tea does degrade in quality over time, so if you haven’t touched that tea you don’t especially enjoy in months or years, it is unlikely to have improved in flavor. Go ahead and toss it out!
Tea Organization
I have to admit that while I love a nice cup of tea, I’m not a tea snob, and I like to try different kinds. Before I figured out my tea storage, I had a large collection of boxes of tea stacked on top and in front of one another in a cabinet, and I had to shuffle them around to get to the ones in the back.
My life improved when I discovered that the best way to store tea is in a drawer! With a drawer, there’s no perilous stacking, shuffling, or reaching on tip-toes to get to that tin on the top shelf in the back. Everything is flat in front of you, easy to see and access. And maybe I’m the only weirdo who feels this way, but there’s something strangely satisfying about neatly fitting all of your tea and tea-making accessories in a drawer.
Once you have a drawer picked out, the first choice you need to make is whether you want to keep your teas in their boxes, or take them out and only store the packets. If you’re taking the tea out of the boxes, you’ll need drawer organizers. Cutlery/silverware organizers often fit tea bags perfectly, or you can use something like these adjustable slotted drawer organizers to make custom-sized tea compartments in your drawer.
The other option, and the one I chose, involves Tetris-ing your boxes and tins into a drawer. You can also combine the two approaches, keeping some teas in the containers they came in, and sorting individual tea bags.
I also like to keep my tea-making tools and accessories in my tea drawer, so mine contains a matcha whisk, timer, strainers, a measuring spoon, and soy sauce dishes, which make perfect tiny plates for spent tea bags. My electric kettle is on the countertop above the drawer, and my mugs in the cupboard above, so everything I need for a cup of tea is all in one place. In general I consider myself “organizationally-challenged,” so my organized tea drawer makes my daily cups of tea even more satisfying.
Even if the weather where you live is still summer-like, the calendar is telling us that now is the time to transition into an autumn mindset. Use the fresh start of this new season to reset and plan. Make yourself an autumn bucket list and have the best fall ever!
Relishing pumpkin-spiced drinks, wearing plaid, and finding new places to display decorative gourds are important, but your autumn bucket list can be more than a catalog of happy fall activities. It’s a tool to help you be intentional about what is most valuable: the relationships in your life, the beauty around you, new experiences and familiar traditions. Read on for a few suggestions.
Play Pumpkin Fairy
This time of year, pumpkins and gourds are for sale at every turn. Take the opportunity to buy one for a neighbor, co-worker, or friend. It is a low-key and unexpected way to do something nice. Every time they see it on their porch or desk, the reminder will brighten their day.
Engage your Nose
Harness your sense of smell to send a signal of change to your brain. Make stove-top potpourri, buy a new candle, or use a fall essential oil blend around your home.
Visit an Apple Orchard
It is a festive outing, for sure, but there is something more to be gained from picking apples than great Instagram pictures. Most of us don’t have much of a connection to harvesting in our everyday lives. There’s something very special about picking your own food, and it’s a great opportunity to make memories with those close to you. Take advantage of this time of year and visit an orchard!
Host a Potluck
Don’t let the season pass without making time for the relationships that are important to you! Invite friends, neighbors, and/or family for a potluck dinner. Consider a pumpkin food theme or a flannel dress code. With everyone pitching in, the gathering doesn’t have to be a chore.
Cheers to Gratefulness
Photo: Raw Pixel
Buy some apple cider and be intentional about making a toast to the abundance in your life. You can do this alone or in a group, at a feast or just a Tuesday dinner of leftovers. Thankfulness is worth cultivating.
Be Practical, and Check in on Your Home
Photo: Tomo Nogi/StockSnap
Take some time to change your furnace air filters and schedule a furnace check to avoid the inconvenience of meeting the first cold snap of the season with no heat. Also, think back and if you cannot remember the last time you changed the batteries in your smoke alarm do it today. Start the process of getting your home ready for winter. Once the leaves have fallen, take some time to clean your gutters or schedule someone to do it for you. Come spring, you will be so glad you did.
This is a classic autumn bucket list activity that needs little explanation. If you’re looking to do something different, a quick internet search will give you plenty of ways to carve or decorate pumpkins. Any effort you expend is worth it. Let your creativity shine!
Get Lost
Make plans with your most entertaining friends to meet at a corn maze. There is not a clear explanation why wandering around in a corn field generates hilarity, but it does. It always does.
Now that you have harvested your crop of apples, turn some of them into apple butter. This is the easiest of recipes and nearly impossible to mess up. If you haven’t tried it yet, homemade apple butter will elevate your oatmeal, yogurt, toast, or bagel to new heights of enjoyment!
Display an Autumn Memento
Go into your photo archives and find a picture from a past fall that makes you smile. Don’t worry about composition or if it meets the standards for a technically impressive photograph. If the picture brings you a happy feeling, it doesn’t matter if the subjects are squinting or out-of-focus. Print it out and put it somewhere you will see it all season long.
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What else will you be adding to your Autumn bucket list? Leave a comment and let us know!
Halloween can get cheesy fast. Just look around your local craft stores, and you’ll see ghosts and goblins and witches galore. But there are ways to decorate your home for the holiday in a more sophisticated way… and we set out to find 15 of the very best. Click through to check them out.
5. For an oh-so-spooky tablescape, use black dishes and a black tablecloth and add a few pops of color in the form of orange flowers. Learn more here. [Photo: The Decorista]
BOO! Did I scare you? If not, this might give you a fright: it’s almost October, which means it’s almost time for Halloween! Now that’s truly terrifying. Halloween is one of the most fun holidays to decorate for, and there are so many ways you can celebrate. Whether you prefer creepy crawlies, or more glitz and glam, there’s no end to the DIY Halloween decorations you can make to adorn you home – inside and out! Here are a few of our favorites. Prepare to be spooked!
7. All you need to create this unnerving look is a little bit of construction paper and some double-sided tape, and you can give your existing images a fresh, soul-less look.
13. Modern wall art transforms into a geometric spider web, thanks to spray paint. Turns out you can create DIY Halloween decorations out of any old thing!
22. Make DIY Halloween decorations using things purchased at the Dollar Store, like this vase of skulls! There are lots of other affordable ideas on this page, too.
43. Cheesecloth sold by-the-yard at the fabric store is a great, low-budget method for creating ghostly draperies. Hang inside your windows, or from your stoop.
47. We love easy DIY Halloween decorations, and these hanging witch hats fit the bill. When night falls, they light up thanks to LED light sticks hidden inside each hat.
48. Birds are beautiful by nature, but a bunch of them together is just creepy. This blogger gathered sticks from her yard, and paired with some faux birds, a tasteful raven-themed porch was born.
With five children, Shifrah is learning a thing or two about how to keep a fairly organized and pretty clean house with a grateful heart in a way that leaves plenty of time for the people who matter most. Shifrah grew up in San Francisco, but has come to appreciate smaller town life in Tallahassee, Florida, which she now calls home. She’s been writing professionally for twenty years and she loves lifestyle photography, memory keeping, gardening, reading, and going to the beach with her husband and children.
