Building Your Own Personal Tea Ritual

Or: how to accidentally trick yourself into taking five minutes off with Keats & Co. | Aly Krajewski, Good Store Art Director

I have a complicated relationship with the word ritual. It’s become one of those words that the internet sunk its digital claws into. Somewhere along the line, "having a routine" transformed into "curating a morning ritual," and now every video I see seems to feature someone waking up at 4:52 a.m. to journal by candlelight, drink chlorophyll water, ice-roll their face, meditate for thirty minutes, and somehow still make it to work by nine. (How??)

Meanwhile, I routinely discover that I made myself a cup of coffee an hour ago and forgot to drink it. So no, I wasn't exactly in the market for a tea ritual this year. But somewhere between working at Good Store and slowly making my way through our different Keats & Co tea blends, I realized I'd accidentally made one anyway. And not the Instagram kind!

The kind where I know that if I've hit that 2:30 afternoon wall (that magical time when my inbox suddenly starts looking like abstract art instead of words) I'm probably reaching for Moonlit Mint. Not because I read somewhere that mint improves focus or because I think I should have a color-coded wellness planner. Mostly because making tea forces me to stop doing whatever dumb thing I was trying to power through. 

You can't really rush loose leaf tea. … Well, you can, but it'll taste like you rushed it. You boil the water, you scoop the leaves, you wait. For three or four whole minutes, there isn't really anything to “optimize”. I usually stare out the kitchen window, wander around watering plants that probably don't need watering, or stand there thinking about absolutely nothing. I don’t set out looking for mindfulness. I mostly wait for water to boil.

That's sort of the sneaky genius of having a tea ritual. I don’t want to make myself a different person! I’m just giving my current self permission to pause without having to earn it. I've also found that different teas have quietly claimed different jobs in my day, almost without my noticing.

Bright Star Breakfast Blend has become my "let's see what today's emails have in store for us" tea. It has enough body to feel substantial, enough brightness to wake me up, and—most importantly—it gives me something pleasant to focus on before I open the message that's inevitably titled "Quick Question!!!" It doesn't magically make Mondays disappear, but it does make them considerably tastier.

Crystal Air Peppermint, on the other hand, has become my reset button. There are some afternoons where the only productive thing happening is me reorganizing my desktop folders or rereading the same sentence six times. Making a cup of tea creates a clean break. Task over. New task. Fresh cup. Fresh brain. At least that's the theory, and it's working well enough that I'm not asking too many questions.

My evenings belong to Glowing Gold Chamomile. I'm not going to tell you it instantly melts away stress or guarantees the best night's sleep of your life because, frankly, that's a lot of pressure to put on a plant. But I will say there's something deeply satisfying about ending the day the same way every evening. The laptop closes and the tea steeps. Somewhere in those few minutes, my brain seems to get the memo that work is, in fact, over.

As it turns out, I don't think the tea itself is the ritual. The ritual is deciding that, for the next five minutes, nothing is so urgent that it can't wait until the kettle finishes boiling. That might sound obvious, but I think we're getting worse at it as a people. Every spare moment has become an opportunity to answer another email, listen to another podcast, squeeze in another task, or scroll just a little farther than we meant to. Waiting has become something to avoid instead of something that simply...happens.

Tea politely disagrees! It asks you to wait a little. To drink it while it's still warm instead of absentmindedly carrying it from room to room until it's mysteriously cold. (If you have never done this, congratulations on being significantly more organized than I am.) And because it's Keats & Co, that little pause stretches a bit farther than your own kitchen.

Every purchase helps fund tuberculosis testing and treatment through Partners In Health, turning something as ordinary as your afternoon cup into something that reaches well beyond your mug. I like that. There are plenty of daily habits that disappear into the ether the moment we're done with them. Tea doesn't have to.

I still wouldn't describe myself as a tea expert. If you asked me to identify tasting notes beyond "I like this one" and "I really like this one," I'd probably fail spectacularly. But I do know this: my days feel just a little better when there's a moment built into them that's intentionally slow. Not because someone on the internet told me I needed a ritual. Because, quite by accident, I found one that I actually wanted to keep.