Tea drinkers inevitably have old tea bags in their pantry along with their other teas. As we have either given up tea bags for higher quality loose leaf tea or been given them as a gift by a non-tea drinking friend, these old tea bags take up space because it feels wasteful to throw them away. Well, here are 3 easy ways to use those old tea bags around the house without ever having to drink them.
Fertilizer and compost for your plants. You may not like the taste of stale tea bags (if your tea tastes like paper, it is stale), but your plants love it. Break open those tea bags and put the tea leaves around your house plants or out in your flower beds. They will decompose quickly and their nutrients are helpful for any plant.
Treat yourself to a tea bath. The Chinese have used tea for centuries to help alleviate the pain of sun burn or poison ivy. Black tea is best for this, but other teas will work as well. You can place a cool wet tea bag on a burn to alleviate the pain. Brewed black tea also helps to dry out a weeping poison ivy rash. After you have brewed the tea for your skin, allow the bags to cool and use them as a compress for your eyes. Black tea helps to remove the puffiness around tired eyes.
Deodorize your home. There is a reason tea is stored in air tight containers. Tea is hygrosopic, which means it absorbs moisture and odor from the air. The Chinese will leave a small plate of used tea leaves in freezers and refrigerators to remove odor. Put those tea bags in your closets to remove odor. Dried used tea bags also work in removing odor from shoes. The good news here is that the tea doesn’t impart its own smell while absorbing odors. You know when to change the leaves by smelling them. They will smell like the odor they absorbed.
So, clean those bags out of your tea cabinet and put them to work for you!