Spring Clean Bin Final Count

I've finally finished going through my stash, and in the end I was able to empty thirty bins, which I stacked up so I could take this atta-girl pic. One was filled with yarn, and three with old books, but the rest were packed with fabric and craft supplies. Mostly fabric, I'm sorry to say. What I decided to keep fit into five bins, which is still a lot, but way better than thirty. All of the unwanted fabric went to our local Goodwill, where I know a lot of quilters in the area do shop for fabric, so it has another chance to be made into something.

Some surprises I found during this project:

Ten brand new spools of Holographic Sulky, including one in a rose color that I can't find at the shops here anymore. I had them in a couple of project bags that I tucked away and never got back to.

A brand new disappearing ink marker and a couple of old ones; also stashed with various old projects. I'll have to test the latter to make sure they still work.

My old Chococat needle case, in which I stored all my hand and machine needles -- it was packed with all the needles I had stashed, too. This went missing a couple years ago. I am so happy I found it; some of these needles are really expensive.

It wasn't easy to do this, and I probably kept more fabric than I should have, but I think reducing my stash by almost 75% made it totally worth the effort. I've also decided not to buy any more new fabric until I use up at least half of what I've kept.

Also, and I think this is important, unless something drastic happens here that I feel I need to share, the blog will be a COVID-19 free zone for the duration. But if you need to someone to talk to via e-mail, for any reason, I'm here. Just shoot me a note at LynnViehl@aol.com.

Comments

nightsmusic said…

What a treasure! I have a bunch of boxes like this in the storage above the garage, but it's much too cold for me up there right now because there's no insulation and it's not heated. My plan in the spring is to get a Bagster, take a chair up there and start going through things. I won't get rid of my books. But there's just so much other stuff. Junk that can be tossed, stuff I haven't looked at in forever, leaded glass equipment I'd like to find a home for because I probably won't do that anymore...maybe I'll find my mother's button jar. I thought it might have gotten tossed when we moved. I sure hope not. Only time will tell. I'll donate as much as I can though and then chuck the rest because I don't want to bother with a garage sale.

March 14, 2020 at 11:59 AM

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to...

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

Valerean

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