Last weekend was a three-day one for Canadians as we celebrated Victoria Day on Monday, May 20. Since Paul was out of town until Saturday afternoon and I had actually just done a road trip on Thursday, it was a stay-at-home type of weekend. And for good reason. The flower boxes on the deck needed weeding, the lawn needed a good mowing and trimming and most important to me, my stash needed to be organized.
It was on November 3, 2011 I last wrote about getting my stash in a manageable format and since then it has been all down hill. I have been purchasing yarn, leaving it in the bags it came in along with other related items. This meant, I couldn't find what I wanted when I wanted it, so sometimes I'd purchase more of something already owned. It had become an unhealthy slippery slope of excess, not to mention all the clutter which is not good for creativity.
I've known something had to be done for sometime. Eighteen months is far too long between reorganizing. So I started with a plan. My yarn had to be arranged in a way that I can see all of it at once. The decision was to set up my own yarn shop at home. Bookshelves would need to be sourced large enough to hold my stash yet small enough to fit my space. Taking measurements was necessary and looking at options had to be done. Luckily for me I have a magic weapon for all of this: Paul. He helped me make sure my measurements were accurate. They were, but a second pair of eyes never hurts. I looked at options at some of the local discount shops, but spending $200 or more for shelves didn't suit me. If I was going to spend money it should be on yarn, not shelves.
Then in February Paul found the perfect shelves, approximately 5 feet (1.5 meters) high and 3 feet (.9 meter) wide with 8 blocks to fill. They were black, my favorite colour for this type of thing, and affordable, $20 each on sale. So that weekend we went to XS-Cargo and picked up three sets of shelves meaning there were 24 cubes.
The following weekend, so this would have been late February or early March, I decided I should be able to read the picture instructions well enough to put one of them together. Unfortunately, I didn't quite get the gist of it and instead of successfully putting the shelf together, I managed to break a few of the pegs and tore the black covering from the particle board in a couple of spots. So until this weekend, that repaired but yet disassembled shelf sat in an extra room. The other two were stored safely away from me in their packing boxes.
On Sunday, Paul volunteered to help me set one up. And sure enough when I saw how easy it was to do the way he approached it I became motivated to get the project done before I had to return to work on Tuesday. With his help we put the three shelves together in a little over one hour and one-half. This is what they looked like then:
Yesterday morning I started with excitement by removing yarn from the plastic boxes and bags it had been stored in to develop my own yarn shop. The yarn that is all acrylic for my food knitting was placed on the left, sock yarns and other specialty yarns are down the centre, and the right side of the shelves was used to store my nice wool. And in only three more hours, my personal yarn shop looks like this:
It is a great improvement over the mess that lived there only a day before. All the buttons are now together; some still need to be strung on strips of card stock so the entire set can stay together, but the buttons can be found without sending out a search and rescue team. I located some missing tools (needles and crochet hooks) in the process and decided to give away some small scarves to a colleague's daughter. She can use them for dress up or whatever suits her. Best part of all though, it feels as though I have my own yarn shop at home. If I need something I can just walk upstairs and "shop."
The uncluttering of my stash seems to have also uncluttered my creativity. There's much baby knitting to be done and only six months to go! It is great when a plan comes together, even if support had to be called in.
It was on November 3, 2011 I last wrote about getting my stash in a manageable format and since then it has been all down hill. I have been purchasing yarn, leaving it in the bags it came in along with other related items. This meant, I couldn't find what I wanted when I wanted it, so sometimes I'd purchase more of something already owned. It had become an unhealthy slippery slope of excess, not to mention all the clutter which is not good for creativity.
I've known something had to be done for sometime. Eighteen months is far too long between reorganizing. So I started with a plan. My yarn had to be arranged in a way that I can see all of it at once. The decision was to set up my own yarn shop at home. Bookshelves would need to be sourced large enough to hold my stash yet small enough to fit my space. Taking measurements was necessary and looking at options had to be done. Luckily for me I have a magic weapon for all of this: Paul. He helped me make sure my measurements were accurate. They were, but a second pair of eyes never hurts. I looked at options at some of the local discount shops, but spending $200 or more for shelves didn't suit me. If I was going to spend money it should be on yarn, not shelves.
Then in February Paul found the perfect shelves, approximately 5 feet (1.5 meters) high and 3 feet (.9 meter) wide with 8 blocks to fill. They were black, my favorite colour for this type of thing, and affordable, $20 each on sale. So that weekend we went to XS-Cargo and picked up three sets of shelves meaning there were 24 cubes.
The following weekend, so this would have been late February or early March, I decided I should be able to read the picture instructions well enough to put one of them together. Unfortunately, I didn't quite get the gist of it and instead of successfully putting the shelf together, I managed to break a few of the pegs and tore the black covering from the particle board in a couple of spots. So until this weekend, that repaired but yet disassembled shelf sat in an extra room. The other two were stored safely away from me in their packing boxes.
On Sunday, Paul volunteered to help me set one up. And sure enough when I saw how easy it was to do the way he approached it I became motivated to get the project done before I had to return to work on Tuesday. With his help we put the three shelves together in a little over one hour and one-half. This is what they looked like then:
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| The three sets of shelves together in place. There's 24 cubes to fill. |
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| My in-home yarn shop |
The uncluttering of my stash seems to have also uncluttered my creativity. There's much baby knitting to be done and only six months to go! It is great when a plan comes together, even if support had to be called in.
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