The Unspeakable

There is a running joke with myself and my knitting friend Cheryl who move to Arizona this past fall. Our joke was about how private our stashes are. A girl never kisses and tells and she never shows her stash. I posted on Facebook the other day that I was reorganizing my stash. It's sure not because I want to, I have to. A smaller closet in our master bedroom is going to be sheet rocked up and made into a solid wall for more space in our room. The nice part the whole process is, the closet that backs up to the master bedroom closet is in my office. That closet wall will be torn down and then that will extend the "office" closet. Since I am no longer in business, I have decided that the spare room will now be my hobby room and my stash will be stored there. So decluttering, reorganizing and rearranging is taking place a little bit everyday until it's done.

I had cleaned out the small master bedroom closet a few years ago and got rid of all my cross stitch, flower arranging, candle making and any other hobby I had stuff. So much stuff that I got eight large black plastic bags of stuff. I didn't feel a thing when I got rid of all of it. There is still much in the closet that needs to go so the second purging cometh.

All knitters are curious about another knitter's stash. While I am not going to show all of mine, I will show how I have been organizing it so it makes sense when I go to look for something for a project. Remember I am not buying any yarn this year and after looking at what I organized today, it might have be extended to two or three years...plain and simple-I have WAY more stuff than I need and realized.

My stash has been split between large bags of yarn for afghans and sweaters in the closet and the rest of the stuff in baskets on a bookcase and eight plastic drawers sitting out in the bedroom. So here is how I have started organizingI . I bought four new larger drawers yesterday and have been trying to get things off the shelves and into the drawers.

I bought these drawers at Big Lots (a discounted store like a Dollar Tree store), but I am sure that you can find these at Walmart, K-Mart, Target and the Container Store. I bought four of the largest size they had yesterday. In a few days will go back and look for four more. Yes, I did say four more. I have not even gotten into the closet stuff yet so I am going to need more drawers.

Okay here is how I start rearranging things.

I divided my sock yarns into two drawers. One drawer is sock yarn in skeins.
Sock yarn in hanks is the second drawer.
I needed two drawers for misc types of roving that needs to be spun. Drawer #1
Roving drawer #2. I still have five processed fleeces underneath the bed in rolling double sided sweater boxes. There are also two plastic tubs; one with crochet threads and one with acrylic yarn.
A cotton drawer.
Two drawers are dedicated to my hand spun. One is a drawer with hanks.
The second hand spun drawer is the stuff that is caked up already.
Another drawer is just lace weight.There are two drawers with just misc fun fir, ribbon and spooled yarns.
Misc. yarn drawer #2 . I have two more drawers left. One has nothing but my handmade wool socks. Since I don't want any winged creatures eating my socks I have put them in their own drawer with cedar blocks to project them year 'round. Then there is a drawer that has some acrylic yarn in it. That will be moved and condensed down after I get two or three more drawers. I want one drawer dedicated to acrylics that I want to keep, one for baby yarn and the rest to go for the bags of yarn for sweaters and afghans that are sitting in the closet right now with no where to go.

I still have these items to contend with...
This basket holds the two mitered square blankets that I have set aside for awhile.
There are plenty of things like this still in the closet. One bag has the last KnitPicks order of yarn for 2010. The basket is filled with Alpaca skeins to make my husband a scarf. I want this stuff in drawers so it's more organized and I know where everything is. I am not even going to show the closet. It's just too messy for public consumption. I will show you more drawers another time after I get them together.

So I did something I swore I would never do-show my stash. Well sort of show it. I will never drag it all our for display. It just takes too much time. Besides, I told Cheryl I would never show my stash and I am sticking to that...sorta.