Spring Cleaning - Organization Tips

Something about spring makes me clean: clean out the old, finish up things in progress, plan for new projects. This year, I decided to clean my studio and it led me quite the merry chase. But I stuck it out and I am super happy with the result. Yay Spring!

I started with the studio bookcase. It wasn’t big enough to hold the weaving, spinning, and knitting books that kept finding their way into the room. Stacks started growing around the room cluttering all the horizontal surfaces. Our home has a library with plenty of shelves, but they also housed a collection of magazines and single patterns I had amassed over the years. In my soul of souls, I knew the magazines held patterns and ideas I would never use, especially if they were tucked away out of sight in a bookcase. I emptied all the magazines and patterns out of the library and moved the books up to those shelves, neatly ordered and sorted. That left me with a huge pile of magazines and patterns. Taking 15 at a time, I flipped through each one. If I thought a number of patterns in the magazine might actually be used, I kept the whole magazine. If only 1 or 2 appealed to me, I scanned the patterns I liked and the magazine went on the discard pile. I probably kept 15 knitting magazines out of 150. The rest went to the local knitting group and their leftovers will go to our local charitable resell-it shop. I feel so much lighter.

I followed the same process with the patterns, the weaving magazines, and the spinning magazines. The results were not quite as dramatic since I started with fewer and, really, I seem to have been considerably more discriminating in my original selections. Also, the weaving magazines are more frequently available on-line, so I am not going keep a paper copy of something I can have electronically.

Then I tackled my fiber. My stash had grown without plan over the last year as I became more obsessed with my spinning. I have lovely plastic containers to hold the fiber, but if I don’t know what I have, I don’t use it. Going through the collection and cataloging means I can start working my way through the projects for which the fiber was originally intended. Which is exactly what I did – a reward for diligent efforts. Check out the beautiful yak/silk hand-dyed blend of laceweight, 2-ply yarn I created!

And all of this is a waste of time if I don’t change my habits so here goes: 1) I will look for patterns within my library first; 2) if I haven’t looked at a pattern/magazine at all in a year, it’s out; and 3) I must slowly digitize those patterns I really want to keep. With these 3 simple rules, I should be able to successfully re-evaluate, re-use, and re-cycle throughout the year. If not, next year will at least be way easier to handle, I am sure.