Finally, 2020 is over and 2021 is here! New year, new data on this case study of a tea hoarder. Welcome to my annual tea consumption and stash data. I keep track of all the tea that comes into my possession and how much I drink.
Here is a template of my Tea Stash Spreadsheet! Save a copy and start keeping track of your stash. I highly suggest tracking your tea stash before it gets out of control!
This is the method I use to track my personal tea consumption. Everything tea that I own is weighed, including samples. I weigh every gram of tea I drink.
Previous Years
2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019
Oolong Owl’s 2021 Tea Stash
I started 2021 with 734 teas! My tea stash ratios haven’t changed much compared to 2019 and 2018, so my tastes are fairly settled in. In September 2020, I hit the most teas I’ve owned at 752. To mitigate the frightening amount of tea, a lucky tea friend got a massive box of sheng samples that I wasn’t going to finish, but I still ended up with over 700 teas.
Teas I Purchased: 6756 grams / 14.9lbs. (2020 bonus numbers I have never shared but shared for tea hoarding shame.
I admit, a lot of tea companies sent me tea this year for review, making this the most tea I’ve gotten from companies. 2020 was a rough year for retail so many were trying to find ways to market. During 2020 I actually bought 60% less than in previous years. There are also tea orders missing, as some of my tea packages from Feb/March ended up in Shanghai on May 19, never to be seen again.
The Tea Stash
All my Pumidors are lost causes, all of them are exploding disasters unless I switch to a brick only collection.
My Sheng pumidor! I usually do heated storage in the winter but I mostly fixed this room’s temperature problem by sealing up the drafty fireplace.
The top pumidor is for shous. Below, the double wine fridge is for white tea.
Majority of my tea is in this shelf, jammed into all those tins. The box pile on the floor is my review queue.
Oolong Owl’s 2020 Tea Consumption
Average tea per day = 13.7 grams
Average tea per month = 417.7 grams
Most teas drank in a month = 604 grams, January 2020 – before Covid.
Least tea drank in a month = 98 grams, June 2020.
Total Tea Consumed during 2020 = 5012 grams / 11lbs
2019 I drank 6504 grams / 14.3 pounds. 2020 was a screwed up year, but extra screwed up for me. I also quit drinking caffeine leading up to June. I ended up having 2 surgeries, one in June and an unexpected one in July. It took me till October to go back to my regular tea drinking habits. From June to August I was completely off the social media grid. During my recovery, I didn’t trust myself with any liquid that wasn’t in a sippy cup, so I drank a lot of Pique Tea. You all might not have noticed as I prewrote many months worth of content and scheduled it. That said, I finished off fewer teas and drank less.
2021 Tea Goals and Predictions
Tea Space – In December I completely rearranged my tea space thanks to a new TV. I am a cluttery owl, but I would like to be optimized to easily find my teaware. Mostly, I need to just get rid of empty tea tins and reorganize the shelves.
Tea Stash Ratio – out of 22 tea bags, there are only 7 teas I care about, the rest I should toss. I hold onto tea bags as I use them for travel. I didn’t travel in 2020 and likely not traveling much in 2021. I am debating removing the Tea Bag section and replacing it with Heicha which is currently in the shou list.
The tea blogger burnout never ends – I am getting tired of saying how shit 2020 was. Prewriting months of content was painful. Tea conventions and lurking at my local tea shops recharges me, but none of those happened for good reasons. My health issues screwed me up so I lost months of being able to do different content.
As stated last year, the majority of tea bloggers do this outta passion, the hours needed to make content never pays out.
I have started a Ko-fi page, for those feeling generous to throw a couple of bucks to feeding the owls in the hamster wheel powering the hosting lights. Ko-fi has a cool system as they do not take a cut as Patreon does.
Thanks my lovely owl peeps and here’s to 2021 being a great tea drinking year!
