Tea Station

Hello everyone!

I'm a huge tea drinker and have accumulated quite the collection over the past two years.  I was storing my tea in a storage cupboard in the kitchen and found myself forgetting about it.  As they say, "out of sight, out of mind."  I truly enjoy drinking it and wanted to do something about it.  I didn't want to willy-nilly store the canisters and bags of tea on the counter so I spent some time on Pinterest and think I've found a great solution. 

This is what I started with:

It was a HOT MESS! I didn't even know what kinds of tea I had and it was totally not accessible.

 

I ended up buying a metal basket from Michaels for $19.99 (minus 40% of course!).  The basket had a chalkboard front which I loved. For now I decided to leave it the bare metal but it can very easily be spray painted any color.  I'm thinking about picking a color soon but can't seem to decide so I've added it to my "to ponder" list. 

 

To complete the tea station/organization project I got out everything that I would need for the perfect cup of tea.  David's Tea (which is where I buy all my tea from) sells these awesome colored tins for tea storage.  If you buy 100g of a kind of tea you get a silver tin for free or you can buy the colored ones individually. 

 

Since I like to reuse my colored tins I didn't want to label them with one of the large labels that come with the tea.  I used washi instead! It served the purpose and means that my tins can easily be washed, reused and relabeled.

 

These are the silver tins that are free with 100g purchase.  They come prelabelled with the kind of tea you bought and steeping instructions. 

 

Tea measuring spoons!

 

Tea bags! I have a travel mug from Davids Tea that I use for work but I like to use these bags when I'm home since I'm usually only making one cup of tea at a time. 

 

After I gathered everything I needed, I corralled it into my new bin! I was able to fit 8 of the tea tins, two spoons and the box of tea bags in this bin.  It's situated on my counter next to our Keurig and coffee stand which is the perfect cue for me in the mornings.  It's not too large so I didn't have to compromise any counted space. 

 

View from the top:

 

 I'm loving the final product and find it super easy to switch out tea tins as needed.  I'm not forgetting about my tea anymore! How do you store your coffee/tea?  Do you have a coffee or tea station in your kitchen?

 
 

 
 

Weekly Budget/Cash System

Hello everyone!
I'm back again and this time I'm sharing a makeover of our weekly financial organization.  We follow a budget in our household and find that withdrawing cash every payday helps us stay on track financially and keeps us more accountable for our purchases. 

We have a couple of categories that we withdraw cash for:
1. Grocery Money
2. Spending Money
3. Gas Money
4. Date Money

We divide the cash up between the categories based on our budget and have historically kept the cash in labeled envelopes.  They were hideous and I was finally tired of looking at them! Worst of all, they were the re-sealing kind so every time we put cash in or took it out they ripped and ripped and ripped. 

 

So I decided to take a few minutes, do something really simple, and make a change! I picked up a small accordion file folder from the Target Dollar Spot for $1.00.  They didn't have any bright colored ones, only white, so naturally I had to spice it up a bit! 

 

The file folder came with labels so I labeled all the categories we needed and stuck them to the sections (with a lot of trouble! Those things are sticky.  One wrong move and you were screwed!)

 

 

 

After I labelled the sections I decided to add some color to the front with washi to make it more appealing.

The final product! It's been working so much better for us so far and was such a simple change to make but really made a huge difference in trying to fight with an ugly, re-sealing envelope every time we wanted to add/take some cash!

 

 

 

Do you budget with cash?  How do you organize it? I'd love to know!