Over the years, I’ve been crocheting since 2002, I have had A LOT of yarn in most of the categories. Currently I have the least amount of yarn I’ve had since 2004. For most of that time, some of my stashed lived in totes and some on shelves. Totes are easy to label, move and sort through. Shelves most things can be seen and grabbed easily.
When we moved to Las Cruces the yarn stayed in totes but now those totes live in my studio, not a storage area. After four years I got tired of looking at the totes and all the digging. It’s time for a change.
While the above photo is actually of my dog asleep on a box, you can see the totes I stored all my yarn in on the left side of the photo. This was the best I could do as a before picture. I forgot to take one before I got started. There are two stacks of totes full of yarn.
I don’t have a lot of space to rearrange and I really like the set up of the studio so the best option was to swap out pieces. I’ve done this a couple of times when I changed something in another room or found something cool on the side of the road. This however was going to have to be more intentional.
To help me decide what needed to be done I went through all these totes and decided what to keep, what to re-home and where it was all going. From the pile of what to keep, I selected everything that was staying in the studio and put it into a couple of totes. Anything super wash is getting re-homed thanks to my new found allergy.
As I was doing this, unbeknownst to her, my daughter shared with me that she wants to make a brioche sweater in fingering weight scraps. I have an entire bucket of those from Leading Men Fiber Arts monthly club. Of which I worked at least half a dozen projects. Those were re-homed to her, as well as other little bits I found in the fingering tote.
All the super wash sock yarn went to my mom who loves to make socks.
That left my tote full of Knit Picks yarn, in all weights and colors, my DK tote of all colors and fibers and my tote of lace yarn. The lace yarn will never go away.
What remains, aside from the lace, is American wools, mostly from two different companies and then some from smaller businesses.
Mom said she would store the two totes that had the Knit Picks and DK yarns, she has since found a treasure trove in those totes and is very much enjoying the yarn. Yay!
The lace yarn and unmentioned drawers of crochet thread, were homed in a closet with the rest of the crochet thread.
What I had left I sorted by brand, then by base and weight if needed. I am so pleased with this new set up!
I can walk in and immediately know which of these, much smaller, totes my next skein is in. Or if I need just a small amount of something for a lifeline or to shoot a tutorial, I know where that’s at too. Last week I wanted USA made currently available lace yarn and I knew exactly which two totes to choose from to see what I had. This is great and will serve me for a long time to come.
The shelf is from Better Homes and Gardens. Like I already mentioned I look to what I have for ideas first, I have 3 of these in the living room for my books. The bottom cubbies have baskets of all kinds of random things. I took all that into consideration but decided I needed totes with lids and not too small of ones either. I did a lot of research before I bought anything. Then I bought a tote first, found locally at Wal-Mart, and tried it in one of the cubbies at home and it was close enough. Bought it all and set it up.
The tags are name badges with these sticky things on the back that will stick again and again. More shelves to dust but I couldn’t be happier for the cost and time put it and what came out.
How do you store your yarn and fiber? Please share in the comments.
Happy Making!
Azariahs Fibre Arts 