Drink Tea

I drink a lot of tea. It's not something that came naturally, I used to be a coffee drinker, but in my defense that didn't come naturally either. At an old job there was free coffee from a service and the old room mate worked in a fledgling Starbuck's franchise. In a single day I would have consumed upwards of 13 cups of coffee, free of charge. The most productive and destructive time in my whole life.

The tea drinking I picked up from my mother's neighbors, a pair of lovely sisters from County Mayo. They would be on the adjoined porch when I came home and I simply could not pass them by without sitting for an hour or two. They scoffed at my sickening black coffee and offered me tea instead. At first it was an odd adjustment, it was dark like coffee but there wasn't the same explosion of energy. Sleeping, however, became possible and I noticed my bowel movements held together.

There is study after study revealing teas efficacy in treating this syndrome or that disease, but in fact - those things are all bullshit. If I experienced any health boost from drinking tea it was by eliminating soda and coffee from my diet. The versatility of tea, its range of flavors and colors, and the ease of brewing it is why I choose it now. I have had many HORRIBLE cups of coffee, some that were so nasty I poured them out after one sip, but tea really can't get screwed up.

The added bonus, tea uses little packaging. I buy it loose, but there is always the traditional tea bag. Between 80 - 300 servings come in one small container, when contrasted to 80 - 300 plastic bottles or aluminum cans you can visualize the benefit. I have seen pure unbleached special paper tea bags, which is overkill to the extreme. Really, the day tea bags become an ecological time bomb I will be a happy man.

A few tips:

Don't leave the tea bag in the water. Once it reaches your desired strength, take it out. Think of a stank, nasty pond, and all the gross leaves and stuff steeping in it. That is what your drink will become. This is the most common mistake of all.

Don't pour hot water directly on the tea bag. You can scorch tea and ruin it. This is especially true for green teas, which have to be brewed at a lower temperature. For green and lighter color teas, pour the water in first and let it cool down a bit, then add the tea. Don't forget to take it out.

If you add milk, sugar, lemon or whatever (I have used maple syrup) do it after. There is no reason for this, but a saturation point is lower with debris in the water. I am a puritan.

Wear dark colors. The probability of spilling shit all over yourself is high, and tea stains are a bitch to get out. Don't forget to brush your teeth. They get nasty quick.

Don't be a Slob

By nature I am a slob. A wicked big slob. It was natural for me to put clean and dirty clothes into to same pile, as if by fission I would end up with only modestly funky clothes. The big pile was a prominent feature in the corner of the room. It had books, wet towels, Xacto knives - you name it, and when company came over? I just threw a blanket over the pile. I remember one time I had a guest at the house and I made them wait downstairs while I stuffed everything into a sleeping bag and threw it in a room mates closet. Grody to the max, but when you work too many hours and live with too many roommates who drive you from the house sometimes it's easier to build a false reality than face the real one.

When the time came and I was enlightened to the effects of my slovenly ways it was clear that I wasn't just unorganized, there was a surplus of clothes. I had enough garb in that pile to clothe me for a month and a half without doing laundry, which was frequently the case. It would take two full days to properly wash and dry everything in that pile. Heaps and satellite piles sat in the cellar in big black trash bags waiting for me to get the time, washing only the essential delicates as need dictated.

Years later I reformed. During one of my many purges I sorted out the gristle from my wardrobe. Irredeemably damaged and uncomfortable items went first. Sweaters that were too itchy, shirts that were too tight, unforgivably stained or torn pants were good candidates. Anything that you would wear only because everything else is dirty should not be in the closet. Today I am left with mostly durable, mostly dark clothing. I am still a slob and spill all sorts of things on my person, and still absently wipe my hands on my pants when a towel is out of reach (I have towels everywhere now). I keep work clothes in the closet where I can't see them or touch them and my leisure wardrobe is on a rolling rack, neatly pressed and organized. I like to keep my clothes out in the open to remind myself of how far I have come.

Think that was the worst part? Far from it. This habit wasn't restricted to my dress, everything was like this. Worse than this was the dishes. As long as there was a clean dish to eat off, there were ten dirty dishes that could wait. I didn't do dishes after I ate like I do now, I did them when someone complained, and frequently only washed the dishes I needed. Essentially, the dishes weren't stored in the cupboard, they were stored dirty in the sink. Glasses were all over the house with little petri dishes of dried up whatever in the bottom. In my defense, I didn't live alone and a lot of the trouble came from not taking responsibility for using a glass, or using a similar glass and being confused about which one it was, and there was NO WAY I was washing a room mates glass... In the end we all wound up in a philosophical deadlock, and drank out of travel mugs that were off limits to others. Yes, the glasses all stayed dirty on the windows sills and side tables, I think until we moved.

Much has changed. Far from the punk rock, thrift store dishes, I don't even eat off anything that hasn't won a design award. There are only enough for two or three people, so there is no surplus to pile up. I used to have different cups for different drinks, but now I just have an all purpose glass for cold and hot alike. This sort of thing saves a lot of space on the shelf.

To sum up, minimalism didn't really kill my inner slob, but it made it harder to make a mess. I know myself and my weaknesses and if I hadn't become a minimalist there would still be great big piles all around. Really, how useful is something if you keep in a pile on the floor? Do you even value it? The soultion was so simple: I shouldn't have stuff. No stuff, no mess.

With this perspective it was easy to understand that I was wasting a lot of time and energy moving piles around and sorting through dirty/clean stuff. Its ironic how exhausting being a lazy slob can be. I never really felt comfortable in my home, which caused a lot of other problems. It's funny to tell the story, but at the time it was a pretty terrible way to live.