My Tea and Me

Okay, honestly, this post has very little to do with tea and much more to do with organizing my kitchen but it all starts with my tea! 

I only drink herbal tea but I have enough variety at home that it definitely takes up space. 

And that thought, that very dangerous thought is where this all began. 

With a baby on the way, (um, I should maybe make a post about that...) and with the tiny apartment we live in, I have been in FULL ON de-junk, de-clutter and organization mode. Which is saying something because this is a regular thing for me. So, really, I'm in beast mode with this right now.

In addition to wanting to organize my house (and de-junk etc.) my husband and I are gearing up to start the Whole30 on October 1st. I know, I know, that seems far enough away that you may think I don't need to go crazy just now. But, preparation is the key to success. I'm clearing out my kitchen of things that we don't need, things that aren't good for us (on a non-Whole30 scale) and we're preparing bit by bit so that come October 1, we are ready to go!

So, back to the tea organizing... 

I started with my tea shelf because I had so much of it and it is taking up so much space that I was, and am, convinced that there is a better way to store my tea. I also started with the tea because I felt like what I needed to organize it already resided in my house...somewhere. 

And I was right!

After a few minutes (give or take a couple hours) on Pinterest, a light bulb sprang to life in my brain. 

I used the following items:

Ball jars-left over from canning

Ikea spice racks- that I bought a couple years ago and never used!!

small plastic storage container (from Target)- I bought 10 of these on sale for $1 about a year ago and didn't end up using all of them

paint- a sample size for $3 from Home Depot. Color: Irish Folklore

card stock- from my craft supply 

a glue stick-I wanted the labels to stick but not be super hard to remove if I needed to

scissors

and

THESE labels from Limeshot Design. They're free! 

So, I got to work moving the loose-leaf teas from their bags to mason jars. Anything that needed an airtight container went into a mason jar. Any of the teas that were in their own bags (like the Bigelow Teas) went into the small plastic container.

After all the teas were settled in their new homes, I painted the Ikea spice racks. As they were drying I printed the mason jar lid labels on my card stock.  I couldn't figure out a way to print the names directly on the labels (I didn't try that hard) so I just wrote them on free-hand. Then I glued them on my jars.

Once the shelves were completely dry, I hung them on my kitchen wall (which was harder than I anticipated but I did it!), placed the jars on the racks and voila!

Then, because I had some frames floating around, I decided to add some art!