No secret: I like tea.
I also like tea mugs.
I think I own over 100 mugs, most of which hidden in the upper cupboards or in boxes in the basement. I have Doctor Who mugs, Babylon5 mugs, Samba Team mugs, a Judie Tzuke mug, several KFAI radio mugs, moose mugs, a pile of computer company mugs (many for companies that no longer exist), a Star Trek mug on which the original crew of the Enterprise “beams out” when the mug is filled with hot liquid, fine china mugs, simple earthenware mugs, and a Charles and Diana Royal Wedding mug that I picked up at a shop in a train station in 1982.
Some of my mugs have come from Cafe Press, which has the worst search engine on the Internet. (Okay, so there are others that are equally bad. That makes them all the worst.)
Mugs from Cafe Press all have the same strange feature: They stain. Badly.
To get them clean, I put in a teaspoon full of powdered dishwasher detergent, fill them with boiling water, and soak them overnight. The next day, I can scrub them clean with a brush or a scrubbie sponge. If the mug is in heavy use, that lasts about two weeks and I have to do it all over again.
I don’t have that problem with other mugs I own, so I have to assume that it’s something to do with the glaze that Cafe Press uses. I wonder if they get their mugs from US shops, or import them from somewhere else.