Checking in: I finished the year with one more tea purchase in November, and my tea cabinet is stuffed again. So part of me feels bad. But the other part feels ok with it: I bought the tea because I unexpectedly found myself in San Francisco again, and so I trekked to the same tea store I had visited in August and bought a pound of each of the two teas I have been drinking all the time from that earlier trip. I had run out of them both, and did an Amazon shop to try to find replacements, but the replacements weren't nearly the same. So when I went out there, I decided to stock up on the stuff I loved instead of waste more money on teas that end up being meh.
So, really, what I regret is the attempted Amazon replacement -- that's what added more teas I don't like too much back to my cabinet.
The nice thing about this challenge, though, is that it completely cured me of the desire to just sort of pick up a whole bunch of different/new teas whenever I pass by a tea shop -- really, the failed Amazon shop itself taught me the futility of blindly buying untried stuff. I now have a few teas that I adore -- even more than the white peach tea I also love -- and so I am going to just stick with replacing those as they run out, and buying any new stuff only if/when I try something and completely fall in love with it to that same level. (Also, the SF tea shop now has a new website, so I can order replacements directly from there and don't have to worry about running out any more or trying inferior replacements.) Meanwhile, I will make myself drink the inferior stuff once a week or so so it gets used up and stops taking up valuable space in my tea cabinet. ;-)