Wisely Thrifting

This was a lot of embroidery threads that I bid on, but quickly fell out of the competition as the bids skyrocketed, ending with a winning bid of $68.77. That, in my opinion, is too much money for partially used and blemished perle threads (that's how they were described in the listing), even if you do get the rainbow of colors.

The same day I dropped out of the bidding we stopped by our local brick and mortar Goodwill, where I found a bundle of yarn, crochet hooks, knitting needles, notions, sewing thread and yes, two nice-size bags of perle and embroidery floss in a rainbow of colors -- probably twice what was being auctioned online. This kind of thing happens to me so frequently I sometimes think the universe is rewarding me for being frugal. Anyway, I paid $5.99 for the whole bundle.

My locally thrifted thread is colorful, pretty, and exactly what I wanted -- for a whole lot less than I thought I'd have to pay (and it came with all the other stuff, too.)

Sometimes people get caught up in bidding, and you have a situation like this where the winner pays retail (or more) for thrifted items. It pays to limit your bids to what you want to pay, and look for what you want in person if you have to drop out. You may get lucky like me. :)

Image credit: The first image in this post came from the auction listing at ShopGoodwill.com.

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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.

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.

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...

Valerean

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