Farewell to the Bean

After being a morning coffee drinker since I was a teenager, I decided back in January to make the switch to drinking only tea. Why, you may ask?

1. Coffee is already expensive, and with the situation in the world (climate and political changes) that's only going to get worse.

2. Because of my lactose intolerance I have to use non-dairy creamer in coffee or I get a stomach ache in the morning. The one I prefer is also becoming more expensive and harder to find now.

3. While I like coffee, I prefer tea, in which I don't use any creamer. I also drink herbal tea at night, and it's more relaxing for me.

4. Tea is much cheaper than coffee, and I have it on hand anyway. This matters because I am still looking for ways to live more frugally, and by me giving up coffee we'll save almost thirty dollars a month, which is $360.00 a year.

5. According to this paper it's possible that green tea may help me avoid suffering from cognitive decline in the near future. While it doesn't have a lot of caffeine, I like the thought that my morning beverage can help me with the problems I'm facing as an older person.

I've been using up the last of my stock of instant coffee, which I hope by the time this post publishes is gone, and then I'll drink only tea after that. My guy will keep drinking coffee but he has only a couple of cups in the morning, and can use regular creamer.

I'm really looking forward to ending my dependency on coffee. I'll also have an excuse to use my teapots again. :)

Image Credit: Alexandra_Koch from Pixabay

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Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to...

Valerean

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