a how-to guide
A BEFORE shot, before optimal stash organisation.
Hey, that's a coincidence isn't it?
Organising your stash is the title of my latest Crafty 101 column for
mixtape.
Issue 5 that is. For optiminal organisational and reading experience you really MUST read them together.
So, why don't you pop over and
get a copy of mixtape right now. And then, come back and read this. It's ok, I'll wait for you, I'm not going anywhere.
Better yet, why not get all the
back issues of mixtape too? They are full of lots of interesting stuff, including a column called Crafty 101...
Why not subscribe? Then you'll never miss an issue.
So, I'm assuming you've got issue 5. Let's get started. This involves three 'doing' words: consult, organise and catalogue.
The mixtape column covers all three, but I'll focus on organise here. (I love the catalogue part but I'm assuming you aren't all as weird as me. If you are, send me an email and I'll fill you in on cataloguing.)
The approach you take depends on:
1. the size and variety of your stash
2. your penchant for categorisation
3. the amount of space you have available
4. how much existing storage you can commandeer for stash organisation.
In my particular case this means:
1. bigger than I realised
2. very strong (
to get a sense of how strong, read this blog post!)3. quite a lot (
why not take a peek inside the studio?)
4. whatever I could.
And after about four weekends worth of unpacking after the house move and organising my stash to within an inch of its life, here are the results:
Fabrics neatly folded and stacked in piles. They are starting to look a bit wobbly in the photo, but they were very neat and ordered in the beginning. Sorted by fabric type, so plies of patterned cottons, silks, linens, knits, wool, cord, denim, etc.
I went for piles because we had these open shelves and I wanted to be able to see ALL my fabrics. I have three plastic tubs of slippery chiffons hidden down below because no matter how hard I tried they just wouldn't sit still in their stack. I think I need to point out that each shelf is 5m wide, so that's 10m of fabric stacks people. And I folded every stack!
Brown cardboard boxes (from Ikea) house all the little bits and pieces such as notions, ribbons, wool and fabric swatches, packing stuff – and there is a whole row of them too.
Wool and yarn stored in plastic tubs near the bottom. A mix of open tubs and boxes with lids, because that's what I had. Yarn sorted by colour mostly, however some of the "special" yarns are sorted by type: linen, silk, cotton and last but not least, nice wools I'll knit one day.
Buttons in glass jars – a practical and stylish solution. But you already knew this.
Trims wound onto card and secured with a pin to stop them from tangling.
Now I took awhile to get to these lovely AFTER shots. But that's because I'm very anal and I had a lot of stash to organise. You probably won't take that long. (And if you take longer, can you let me know so I can let Mr greenolive know that my stash isn't as big as some?!)
Just a word of warning before you start: be careful that organising your stash doesn't become such a diversion that you stop crafting and creating!
Let me know how you get on.