New Year's Organization: Stash Wrangling

The next step in the WEBS organizing plan for the New Year is to get your yarn stash in order. This includes sorting, destashing and tracking, so it's a rather involved process.

But it must be done. I buy yarn throughout the year and stuff it in any drawer it fits in. I don't take pictures. I buy it for specific projects, and then forget what those projects are. And then a few times a year, I panic about how much yarn I have, round up a few skeins I don't think I'll use and add them to my destash page.

I need a more defined yarn approach.


The first step was to take a picture of my stash.

Oy.

(I believe the suggestion was to dump it in a big pile on the floor, but Dory will wander off with yarn if I leave it out, so no.)

Isn't it pretty?

But definitely overwhelming.

Meanwhile, Dory snuggled some alpaca.

I then got down to the business of sorting it: yarn to keep, yarn to destash, and yarn for giveaways.

Dory helped.

And when I finished, I had made a significant reduction to the "keep" pile--plenty of yarn on hand for projects, but certainly a more streamlined collection. Meanwhile, the "destash" pile keeps growing:

 

Next up, the tracking. 

I took pictures of all my unphotographed yarns (well, almost; I still missed a few), and got to the business of updating my Ravelry stash.

There are probably any number of ways to track your stash, but I find Ravelry the most convenient. Most of the details you might want to keep track of are already in their database, so you just photo your yarn, add the number of skeins (and possibly the purchase price, if you really want to astonish yourself by tracking your yarn spending) and you're done. You can even go through your queue and assign your stash yarns to specific projects, so you don't forget why you bought them. Like some people I know.

(For a more detailed overview of how to use Ravelry's stash feature, check out this post on the Fresh Stitches blog.)

And finally, the "organization." I decided the best way to divide things would be by weight--though I've tried that method before and failed miserably. But still, why not give it another go?

I now have lace and fingering weight yarns in one set of drawers, sport and DK in another, and worsted+ in the third.

I even have some extra space in a couple of the drawers!

You'll be seeing some of the yarns I decided to re-home in upcoming giveaways. For now, if you'd like to check out the yarns I'm selling off, you can find them here.