3 Ways to Organize Your Tea Collection

3 Ways to Organize Your Tea Collection

I wouldn’t say I have a tea problem. (You can never have too much tea!) But I do have something of an obsession. Before we moved house at the end of 2019, my tea stash took up half a kitchen cupboard. After we moved into our newer, bigger space, it quickly spread to encompass an entire cupboard and half of another. And that was before my in-laws subscribed me to a tea subscription box for my birthday.

Since we moved into this house, I’ve had grand plans for prettying up my tea collection. Of course, the pandemic put the breaks on most of our home renovation plans as our focus shifted to making sure we could both work comfortably from home. But as things slowly drip back toward some semblance of normal, I’ve realized that organizing my tea collection is probably a much bigger task than I initially imagined.

We have two little tucked away niches in our dining room. One makes a handy coffee station. (It even has a plug located just beneath the counter!) I hope to turn the other into a display station for my various teas.

Theoretically, people will be able to see at a glance what I have and decide what they want to drink. But it’s obvious from the way my collection is bursting out of it’s containment that shelves aren’t going to do me much good if I can’t find a way to make the available tea selection fit on them.

We’re hoping to completely re-do our kitchen sometime in early 2022. My goal is to successfully organize my tea collection before then so that it’s ready when the new shelves go up.

Step One: Tea Bag Containment

One day, I was scrolling through Amazon and encountered the brilliant organizer pictured below. Instantly, I thought, how adorable! It’s like a little filing cabinet for tea! I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. So when I noticed they had gone on sale, I snapped up a pair to give them a try.

They’re actually a bit bigger than I anticipated. Most of my tea bags fit with room to spare on the top. They’re also quite deep. I can fit about a box and a half of tea into one drawer. I like that they’re see-through as well so that you can tell at a glance which tea is in which drawer. For the teas that end up hidden behind other teas, I just use a little post it note saver strip from my planner to label the other tea’s space.

I didn’t honestly realize how much space tea boxes were taking up in the kitchen until I collapsed and recycled all the ones holding the bags now in my tea filing cabinets. (Yes, I’m calling them that forever!) In a single afternoon, I eliminated all my spill over, successfully containing my tea collection to a single cupboard. (Minus the tea filing cabinet.)

The best thing is that these fit perfectly into the section of the kitchen I want to turn into our tea station. I really wish they had come in a three pack, because I think that would have been the perfect amount for me. But I’m so happy with them that I’m hoping to pick up a second pair. Especially now that I realize the drawers are deep enough to also hold small tea tins…

Step Two: Tea Containers

I have a lot of little bags of tea. Specifically, sample size, since I’m subscribed to David’s Tea’s yearly tea subscription this year. Also, now that they sell everything online, every time I order tea, I end up with more bags to store.

Initially, this seems like a good idea. The bags are slim and seem easy to slip into small spaces. But when you’ve got something like 30 of them, they take up a lot of space and are hard to sort through when you want to know what’s available.

It has become increasingly obvious that I need some other way to organize my loose leaf teas. And since my husband probably isn’t going to let me drop a couple thousand dollars on an alchemy table, tea tins are the next best solution.

I’ve spent a lot of time lately scrolling Amazon in search of fun tea tins. And while I’ve found some interesting options, none please me as much as Davids’ Tea’s special edition tins (more on those later). However, I did find a pack of canisters that came in different colors. So again, I thought – why not?

These tins turned out much smaller than I anticipated. (I thought they would be the same size as the Davids’ tins.) But even though they’re about a third of the size I anticipated, they work perfectly for my subscription teas. (Plus they’re adorable!)

I probably need to grab a few more packs, which makes me wish they came in more colors. But I think they’re going to work perfectly for all the teas I don’t intend to keep stocked. Especially after I realized they fit inside the tea filing cabinets. So if I do end up grabbing another pair, I’m going to save myself tons of shelf space!

Ultimate Tea Organization

Since we moved into this house, my goal has been to get a pretty tin for each of my long-term teas. Though the number of teas I want to keep in regular rotation has grown steadily since I started having the money to try new teas again.

Originally, I wanted to get a special, limited edition David’s Tea tin for each of these teas (however many there ultimately end up being). But I have run into a couple of road bumps. Chief among them, my local David’s Tea closed during the pandemic. Though I’ve been keeping an eye on their online store, it seems they haven’t come up with a lot of special tins during the last year. Instead they’ve been redesigning tins for specific teas. Sadly, I don’t like those tins as much as the special edition tins in many cases.

I’ve found some promising options on Amazon, but I’ve also noticed that David’s seems to be dripping a few new tins you can order empty to their online store, so fingers crossed I can eventually gather enough to create my pretty tea shelves.

Until then, I’ll settle for getting each loose leaf tea into an easy to organize vessel. I’m pretty excited about the finishing product, though I know it will take some time to gather everything I need.

If you drink loose leaf teas, leave me a comment and let me know how you store them – I’m always up for trying something new and clever!

3 Replies to “3 Ways to Organize Your Tea Collection”

  1. Wow, you have a lot of different types of tea! That’s awesome.

    I love tea. I also have a medical condition that requires me to limit my caffeine intake, so most of the “tea” I drink is actually herbal or mint-y stuff. But there are some fantastic low-caffeine and caffeine-free teas out there for sure!

    What’s your favourite type of tea?

    1. Yeah, once I started, I just couldn’t stop ^^;;

      I think my mother-in-law has something similar. She used to be able to have at least one caffeinated drink every day, but now she’s had to quit entirely or she gets very dizzy.

      Picking a favorite is really hard. I love my Lady Grey – which is basically just Earl Grey with some orange in it. But I’m also a really big fan of my pumpkin spice chai :3

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