Toss
Those of you who have not had the distinct pleasure of living with me may not know one of my dirty little secrets. I am a stress cleaner. If I am feeling frazzled, I tidy things. And, conversely, if things are untidy, I feel frazzled.
So yesterday, when I went to put something in my office closet and took full account of the mess in there, I sort of snapped. I decided that I simply had to take an hour or two out of the day and purge the stash. It was a fairly brutal purge if I’m being honest. (Yes, yes I did throw away yarn…it’s ok to throw away yarn if that’s what you need to do to bring order to your world. Same holds true for other stuff cluttering up your life, too. You’re not obligated to re-home it, you’re allowed to just ditch it if that’s what you need to do.)
And when I was done, this is what was left.
That’s my personal stash.
Now, before you panic, there are a few caveats. Book yarn (meaning yarn for books in various stages of production) lives somewhere else. It takes up about one of those smaller bins worth of space. I’ve also got another small bin worth of leftovers. And I’ve got one more small bin of prize yarn (meaning yarn to be used as prizes for various knitalongs and upcoming giveaways).
But as far as my ‘hmmm, I feel like making a project, let me consult the stash’ yarn, that’s it.
The alarmingly attentive among you may notice that the front bin is made up entirely of String Theory and Quince yarns (I swear I could knit with nothing but those two for 90% of my knitting and be perfectly happy). It seemed the best way to divide the yarn, given that those two account for more than a third of my stash.
So now it’s your turn to fess up. How big is your stash? Is mine excessive? Or must I hang my head in shame until I can get a real stash? And how do you like to sort it? I considered ‘gray’ and ‘not gray’ but this seemed better in the end.
Actually your stash is pretty tame compared to mine. I have about four bins of the same size as yours, one for fingering, one for sportweight, one for DK and one for worsted/ aran. Plus another smaller one for my lace weight yarns. Plus another mini-plastic cupboard that houses the bulky yarn, the project bags and the leftovers. And most of the yarn is accounted for in terms of potential projects, which means I have enough to knit without buying a thing for the next few years. Yes, I’ve been on a yarn diet for months now, and I am slowly reducing my stash. Or trying to….
I have 2 ikea bookshelves and they are both crammed with yarn, not one empty shelf, and I have a basket that holds several of the brown bags from Quince & Co. with project yarn in them, and then I have boxes of yarn on the floor with a couple of sweater projects. I couldn’t throw away yarn! You’re strong!
That’s about the size of mine. I have cabinets over a crafting/wet-bar counter that houses both my yarn and fabric stash. I keep my fingering in the little cubbies on the end cap-leftovers are tagged and bagged in a basket inside a cabinet. My yarn “yet to be used” take up about 3 shelves that are behind glass doors so I don’t forget about it. I try to keep it manageable cause I have found over the years I’d go crazy buying yarn without a plan, and eventually not using it and donating it. I feel that was money poorly spent. Now I only buy fingering weight yarn if I don’t have a plan. It is ALWAYS good to purge things that are not going to be loved and used. Well done.
My stash is housed in an ikea book shelf with glass doors so I don’t forget about it and so I can stare wistfully at it and cast on 102894 things 🙂 I think your stash looks lovely and if it’s something you’re excited to use, then it is perfect. I don’t think size matters, plus if you have a tidy stash and know exactly what’s in there it’s easier to justify a yarn purchase for something you know you a) must knit & b) don’t have the “right” yarn for…plus there is always room to grow!
My sock yarn is Plucky, Cephalopod, Casbah, Felici each in drawers and everything else is sorted into shoebox sized clear bins by color.
Our stashes are about the same size if your stash includes book yarn, leftovers and prize yarn too.
The rare hank that is not sock yarn just floats about where ever I feel it belongs.
My stash is MUCH larger than yours, and “organized” in a way that probably would only ever make sense to me. You’d most likely break out in hives if you saw it.
I am overly inclined to order. I look forward to the once or twice yearly Restructuring of the Bookshelves. It’s an event, and I greet it with unseemly glee.
For the record, I would be happy to just take any unwanted yarns off your hands. You could totally just send them my way and they’d be out of your hair.
Ahem…
My stash is 2 small bags. It has to be kept relatively small, because I’m at a place in my life right now where I’ve moved once a year for the past 6 years, and will almost certainly do so for the next 2-3. So it’s got to be travel sized, and in easily moveable containers. In the future I’d love to have it organized in bins by weight or color somewhere, but that’s not quite feasible at the moment.
Oh dear. I think my stash is prob 2-3 times the size of yours. My fingering/sport weight yarns alone fit in one of those large tubs.
My stash is probably easily 30% Sanguine/Verdant Gryphon or Cephalopod Yarns, 40% Blue Moon Fiber Arts, 10% Malabrigo, and 20% random things I wanted to try.
And don’t get me started on the handspun or fiber.
Your stash is very restrained. The last time I decided to tidy mine, it involved redecorating the stash room and a trip to Ikea to buy 3 tall chests of drawers, shelves for the knitting books and a table for sewing up. Only problem is that now it is all in one place, my dearly beloved knows how much there is.
If it makes you feel better, I do have a whole shelf of knitting books…they probably take up more space than my stash!
Okay I admit it, my stash is much more extensive. I probably have three large containers of sock yarn, with at least one and a half paired with the sock pattern. Yes I do like socks; nothing more decadent that hand made socks in my humble opinion. Then I have three more bins for sweater yarns.
My earnings vary greatly over the last ten years. When I could afford to buy something I liked, I did. When I can’t, there is a stash.
I also think of my stash as my retirement fund. I would saw at least 50% are paired with patterns that I would make today if I had the time. I also do a lot of charity knitting (chemo hats, mother bears, A4A, preemie hats, etc.) with yarn people give me, left overs, or yarn I buy especially to give away.
I knit at friends some time. We bring yarn we don’t want and people nicely grab for what they like. If someone else wants what you picked, they have to tell you a good sob story as to why they should have it. Sometimes we choose not to take any yarn home.
BTW all of my yarn is stored in 4ml zip lock bags in plastic containers.
I considered the bags in containers thing, but luckily (so far…knock wood) we haven’t had any critter problems. I keep moth traps in the closet and check them, and I keep the light on, and so far it seems to work.
That, and the kitten overlords are excellent moth detectors, so I think I can get away with just containers!
I live in a place with mild winters. We have lots of moths, no matter what I do. Plastic bags are the safest.
Mine is in two drawers and a plastic box, which is hidden in a cupboard and therefore can be believed not to exist. The stuff in the drawers is in individual ziploc bags, partly to keep the moths out, partly to remind me what I bought the yarn for, but mostly if anything happened to me, my knitting friends know what to do with my yarn.
There is also stash which has been earmarked to depart the house; I just haven’t got round to giving it its eviction notice yet!
I think I have about twice as much, which is pretty good considering that I like to collect things. It all fits in a 4-drawer IKEA thing – http://m.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/art/10218027/
I’m trying to use it up now because it’s overwhelming. I have a a drawer of sock yarn, another of worsted, a third of incomplete projects, and the fourth is sweater or tank top quantities earmarked for specific projects.
Mine is in an Ikea book shelf as well, twelve of the 12x12x12 bins crammed full, all yarn in individual ziploc bags as added protection. A few weeks ago I decided to reorganize what had become a giant mess. I dumped everything out and put it all in alphabetical order by yarn brand. For me this seemed so much easier than by weight or by color. Knowing I was headed to Stitches West I also de-stashed skeins I knew I would never use along with pattern books I had no interest in anymore. They all went to the loving homes of people in my weekly knitting group. My full stash is also cataloged on Rav along with the pattern it was purchased for. My current goal, after attending Vogue Knitting in Pasadena, CA this April,is to be on a yarn diet until I make it through at least half of what I have on hand.
15 clear plastic Container Store shoe boxes plus some random bags of overflow. Eek!
There is no organizational scheme, except that the oldest yarn tends to be in the boxes closer to the bottom. They are all cataloged in my Ravelry stash though.
I definitely could go a looong time without buying any more. Especially since the excessive snow shoveling this winter has taken a huge toll on my hands.
I have been known to give some of the truly horrendous yarns (usually stuff that I received as gifts from non-knitters who know no better) to the hubby to use as general string/twine, but actually throwing yarn away…I’m not there yet.
Don’t ever let anyone shame you about your stash. If it fits in a shoebox, fine. If it’s a whole closet, that’s fine too. If it’s 90% of the free space in your house, I hope you never have a fire and have clear pathways to mover around, but that’s cool, too.
I am a closet person. My closet has five shelves, and each shelf has five Ikea boxes (Tjena, I believe) on it. My yarn is sorted by weight into the boxes. I have ten pink boxes and ten black boxes, and eight of my pink boxes are full (like can’t shut the lids properly anymore) of fingering weight yarn. But like my husband says, it’s not like the yarn will spoil if I don’t get to it right away, and this year I’ve been very drawn to knitting from the stash so in theory I might have an empty box or two in there by the end of the year.
That’s a very tidy little stash. Restrained! I try not to stash much. Like many others, I have an IKEA Expedit 4×4 shelf. 4 of those 16 cubbies have 12x12x12 drawers filled with yarn: fingering (full), sport/dk (half full), nice worsted (full!) and junky worsted. So only 4 cubes of yarn. I’m starting to feel like I’m falling behind on it, though. Here are pictures from when I set up my studio (ex kid bedroom) last year.
http://pdxknitterati.com/2014/03/30/studios-are-springing-up/
So happy to have found your blog! My gosh do I love it. I started sorting out my 30 year old stash last week and was struggling so. I was so stuck. What to keep? What to donate? What has potential? What doesn’t? But you know what? Your blog post gave me strength. I got real with myself: why am I keeping 15 skeins of salmon colored Plantation Cotton made by Unger Yarns? Out with it! Yes it has potential, but not for me. Donate…and donate…and donate. I feel great and a song coming on!
I’ve got all of you beat. By … hmm … a lot, apparently. It is well-organized and inventoried, though.
I’m on a mission to knit only from stash this year…so far, so good, but I have nearly 10 more months to go.
I have to admit I read this three times and still feel a sick little feeling in my tummy.
Throw away yarn??? I couldn’t. I have visions of all these amazing yarns you just tossed. I couldn’t do it. I’d have to rehome it (unless it was acrylic. That I’d toss in a heart beat).
But the stash you have left looks tidy and amazing. My stash is about 12 containers of this size…. Just saying.
(And I’d still take any stray yarn you’d want to ship to Australia).
I also thought my stash was small, but compared to what I am hearing, it might be larger than I thought. 🙂 Two drawers, a large cubby, two large tote bags, and part of a medium sized flat rate box, and assorted project bags, plus one shelf of craft books that is mostly knitting books. It feels larger due to the fabric and cross stitch and general crafting stashes that share the same pieces of furniture. The spinning stash has so far managed to fit into one large drawer. Most of the yarn has projects lined up for it, though I knit too slowly to get through it any time soon. There is very little organization – just put it where it fits. I’m not sure where I’ll put the new yarn I’m bringing home from the fiber fest this month. 🙂
I would also happily take any yarn you are evicting, though I understand not wanting to pay for the postage. I cannot throw away anything that could still be useful somehow, much to my husband’s chagrin.
I have a much larger stash than you. But I live at the bottom of the world and so I’ve brought excess back from all trips home to the US, along with what I had before moving down here (which was before I was a ‘real’ knitter who knew what she was doing, truthfully) I’ve got a sock yarn bin, a wee lace bin, a baby knitting bin, a design bin, a sweater lot bin, a miscellaneous bin, a sock yarn blanket scraps bin…and some spill over. I love it all and am not a tidy freak, but I do like it contained.
Thrift stores will take your unwanted yarn 🙂 (And I agree; it’s totally freeing to get rid of what’s unwanted.)
Well, let’s see. i have a bedroom dedicated entirely to yarn. THe wall length closet is full of fleeces and handspinning fiber. Then there is a set of industrial shelves lining the east wall that is chest high, about 24 bins. THen there is the double wide bookcase stuffed with books upatairs and the single bookcase shelf of the “next up” yarns and the three or four project bags with WIPs. I admit, I’m a “collector”
Everyone has their own preference to the stash size they are comfortable with having (and I totally get the stress cleaning thing). Our house has a cedar closet at the top of the stairs, so along with my wedding dress and the original blue prints from our house (Shaker Heights, 1940-something), my stash resides there. I purchased 2 of those hanging sweater organizers, so I think it’s 12 cubes, although not 100% full. 50-75% contain yarn and a few others hold FOs (shawls, things to be gifted). In use winter accessories stay in the coat closet downstairs. (sjn821 on Rav)
You know those fabric shelves with the wire frames that hang from the rod in your closet? About 12″ wide and 3.5′ long? That’s my stash. I see it every time I open my closet to grab a pair of pants or a shirt, and most of the yarn is easily visible, since the depth of the shelves is about the length of a skein.
(Think of a bunch of baguettes stacked on a bakery shelf, their ends poking out at you.)
The yarn is organized, roughly, by weight: fingering and lace on top, sport in the middle, DK and arans on the bottom. No bulky or chunky yarns–since I’m not a fan of the look or of knitting with huge needles–so that saves space.
I am not allowed to have more yarn than I can fit in that storage system. An important rule, since I’ve chosen to live in a small apartment!