Has your craft room gotten out of control? Supplies, kits & unfinished projects are bursting out everywhere! You feel stuck & uninspired! Follow me as I reveal the TOP SECRETS TO REDUCING YOUR CRAFT STASH 🙂
You’re ready to organize. YEAH YOU! Sort your items into three piles with the following objective; 1. You Love it, 2. You can List it(sell it), 3. It can be Re-purposed! Let me explain more!
TOP SECRET #1: LOVE IT!
As you start going through every piece of fabric, yarn, ribbon, unfinished project or kit, really sense if you are getting an emotional connection. Does this item or kit speak to you? Is it something you just can’t live without? Instantly it gives you joy and inspiration? If so it goes in the keep pile. It will be organized for use later on.
TOP SECRET #2: LIST IT!
This secret is about those items you have no emotional connection to. There are two choices here:
1.) Give it away. My number one place to donate is the Salvation Army. They love to receive this type of merchandise! I have donated yarn to them in the past and they are extremely happy to get it. It doesn’t last long on the shelf.
2.)LIST IT . However, if you feel the item is something you want to try and sell use a popular selling site like Ebay or maybe you have an Etsy store. Both places are great for listing this type of item. There are a lot of new selling Apps you can get on your phone. Facebook also has a Fiber Artist’s Marketplace Of course you can always list something in the general marketplace but craft items fit nicely in the Fiber Artist’s market. Other places to list are Craig’s List or you could advertise in your local penny saver type newspaper. A good old fashioned yard or garage sale may also work for you. In other words, JUST GET RID OF IT!
I had alot of merino roving so I decided to use my drum carder and blend colors together to make a sunset batt. I listed it in my Etsy Store.
TOP SECRET #3; RE-PURPOSE IT!
Recently I went through my old sewing room and started to separate the items I had. It was so surprise I found a tremendous amount of kits! Some I decided to put in the LIST IT pile right away. Others had some fibers, yarn or fabric in the kit I might like to use but overall I was never going to make the kit. For years I thought I had to save that kit in it’s original state. What to do?!
One day I was searching for a particular fabric and couldn’t find what I wanted in my regular stash. I came across a kit and saw the fabric I needed. “Oh my! That’s it. I sure wish it wasn’t a part of that kit!” I said to myself. I thought…why can’t I just take that one fabric out….no…I can’t! I am here to tell you there are no kit Police…LOL. No one is going to take you to jail if you take that fabric out of the kit! So, if you are not going to make that project then I am now going to give you permission to TEAR that kit apart! Take out what you want to use. After that decide to sell or donate the rest of it. You can do this with any kit you have decided you are NEVER going to make!!!
Let’s Recap!
Great! you’ve made a commitment to get control of your sewing room back! Items need to go into one of 3 piles.
- LOVE IT!: The item you pick up gives you some type of emotional response. You find some connection to it and you just can’t let it go. It ends up in a KEEP pile. We will work on how to organize all this later!
- LIST IT!: Here you have decide there is no emotional connection. You have no real desire to keep this piece of fabric, yarn, kit or what ever it may be. So you can put it in the SELL/DONATE pile. If you want you can give this area 2 piles for sell & donate so you don’ have to go back through it again.
- RE-PURPOSE IT!: Now you are down to the knitty gritty! A lot of this pile will most likely be from kits you have torn apart because you just have to keep something out of it for yourself but you are not in love with the rest. What is left over can go back to the SELL/DONATE pile or the LOVE it pile. Either way it now has a new purpose 🙂
UFO’s…no, not flying saucers in the sky!
OK! you have followed the TOP SECRETS TO REDUCING YOUR CRAFT STASH but there is one item we haven’t talked about. The dreaded UFO’s. Yep, you know what I mean! Those pesky unfinished projects! I am hear to give you permission to do something else unheard of…DON’T FINISH IT!
The best piece of advice I ever got was this. “Don’t stress about finishing something.” If you are not feeling it or you really don’t like what you are working on look at it as a learning experience. Tell yourself, “I wanted to try a new technique or learn a new skill. But ultimately you don’t want to make an entire project!” At that point TEAR IT OUT, give it away to someone who wants to finish it, or re-purpose it into something else. It’s OK to not finish a project. We can start something just for the sake of learning something new. It doesn’t mean it needs to be a finished project! Who Knew??? 🙂
For Goodness sake! Life is too short to worry about finishing things we don’t really want to work on anymore.
That’s a rap! My TOP SECRETS FOR REDUCING YOUR CRAFT STASH. Drop me a line in my Facebook group and tell me how you are doing on your craft space. I would love to hear what tips and tricks you discovered. Share any projects you re-purposed from UFO’S!
Happy Creating!
Anita 🙂
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